TWENTY  YEARS   AT   HULL^HOUSE 

WITH 

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL   NOTES 


•Tl 


H5^)<^° 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK    •    BOSTON  •    CHICAGO 
SAN    FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &   CO.,  Limited 

LONDON  •  BOMBAY  •  CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  Ltd. 

TORONTO 


Jane  Addams. 


TWENTY    YEARS    AT 
HULL-HOUSE 

WITH 

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL 
NOTES 


BY 


JANE   ADDAMS 


HULL-HOUSE,    CHICAGO 

AUTHOR  OF  "  DEMOCRACY  AND   SOCIAL  ETHICS,"   "  NEWER 

IDEALS   OF   PEACE,"    "THE   SPIRIT   OF  YOUTH 

AND   THE   CITY   STREETS,"    ETC. 


WITH   ILLUSTRATIONS   BY 
NORAH    HAMILTON 

HULL-HOUSE,  CHICAGO 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

1912 

All  rights  reuwed 


Copyright,  1910, 
By  the  PHILLIPS  PUBLISHING  COMPANY. 

Copyright,  1910, 
By  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published  November,  1910.     Reprinted 
November.  December,  1910  *,  January,  March,  July,  December,  1911 
November,  1912. 


T^TortDOOti  ^9resB : 

J.  S.  Gushing  Co,  —  Bervi^ick  &  Smith  CVj, 

Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S. A* 


A  \  Ht) 


TO 

THE    MEMORY   OF 
MY   FATHER 


8on)?^i5  a 


PREFACE 

Every  preface  is,  I  imagine,  written  after  the 
book  has  been  completed,  and  now  that  I  have 
finished  this  volume  I  will  state  several  difficulties 
which  may  put  the  reader  upon  his  guard  unless  he 
too  postpones  the  preface  to  the  very  last. 

Many  times  during  the  writing  of  these  reminis- 
cences, I  have  become  convinced  that  the  task 
was  undertaken  all  too  soon.  One's  fiftieth  year  is 
indeed  an  impressive  milestone  at  which  one  may 
well  pause  to  take  an  accounting,  but  the  people 
with  whom  I  have  so  long  journeyed  have  become 
so  intimate  a  part  of  my  lot  that  they  cannot  be 
written  of  either  in  praise  or  blame ;  the  public 
movements  and  causes  with  which  I  am  still 
identified  have  become  so  endeared,  some  of  them 
through  their  very  struggles  and  failures,  that  it  is 
difficult  to  discuss  them. 

It  has  also  been  hard  to  determine  what  inci- 
dents and  experiences  should  be  selected  for  re- 
cital, and  I  have  found  that  I  might  give  an  accurate 
report  of  each  isolated  event  and  yet  give  a  totally 
misleading  impression  of  the  whole,  solely  by  the 
selection  of  the  incidents.  For  these  reasons  and 
many  others  I  have  found  it  difficult  to  make  a 

vii 


VIU 


PREFACE 


faithful  record  of  the  years  since  the  autumn  of 
^1889  when  without  any  preconceived  social  theo- 
ries or  economic  views,  I  came  to  live  in  an  indus- 
.  trial  district  of  Chicago. 
f  If  the  reader  should  inquire  why  the  book  was 
ever  undertaken  in  the  face  of  so  many  difficulties, 
in  reply  I  could  instance  two  purposes,  only  one  of 
which  in  the  language  of  organized  charity,  is 
**  worthy. "  Because  Settlements  have  multiplied 
so  easily  in  the  United  States  I  hoped  that  a  simple 
statement  of  an  earlier  effort,  including  the  stress 
and  storm,  might  be  of  value  in  their  interpretation 
and  possibly  clear  them  of  a  certain  charge  of  super- 
ficiality. The  unworthy  motive  was  a  desire  to 
start  a  "backfire,"  as  it  were,  to  extinguish  two 
biographies  of  myself,  one  of  which  had  been  sub- 
mitted to  me  in  outline,  that  made  life  in  a  Settle- 
ment all  too  smooth  and  charming. 

The  earlier  chapters  present  influences  and  per- 
sonal motives  with  a  detail  which  will  be  quite 
unpardonable  if  they  fail  to  make  clear  the  per- 
sonality upon  whom  various  social  and  Industrial 
movements  in  Chicago  reacted  during  a  period  of 
twenty  years.  No  effort  Is  made  in  the  recital  to 
separate  my  own  history  from  that  of  Hull-House 
during  the  years  when  I  was  "launched  deep  into 
the  stormy  intercourse  of  human  life  "  for,  so  far 
as  a  mind  is  pliant  under  the  pressure  of  events  and 
experiences,  it  becomes  hard  to  detach  it. 

It  has  unfortunately  been  necessary  to  abandon 


PREFACE  ix 

the  chronological  order  in  favor  of  the  topical,  for 
during  the  early  years  at  Hull-House,  time  seemed 
to  afford  a  mere  framework  for  certain  lines  of 
activity  and  I  have  found  in  writing  this  book, 
that  after  these  activities  have  been  recorded,  I 
can  scarcely  recall  the  scaffolding. 

More  than  a  third  of  the  material  in  the  book  has 
appeared  in  The  American  Magazine,  one  chapter 
of  it  in  McClure^s  Magazine,  and  earlier  statements 
of  the  Settlement  motive,  published  years  ago, 
have  been  utilized  in  chronological  order  because  it 
seemed  impossible  to  reproduce  their  enthusiasm. 

It  is  a  matter  of  gratification  to  me  that  the  book 
is  illustrated  from  drawings  made  by  Miss  Norah 
Hamilton  of  Hull-House,  and  the  cover  designed  by 
another  resident,  A/[r.  Frank  Hazenplug.  I  am 
indebted  for  the  making  of  the  index  and  for  many 
other  services  to  Miss  Clara  Landsberg,  also  of 
Hull-House. 

If  the  conclusions  of  the  whole  matter  are  simi- 
lar to  those  I  have  already  published  at  intervals 
during  the  twenty  years  at  Hull-House,  I  can  only 
make  the  defense  that  each  of  the  earlier  books  was 
an  attempt  to  set  forth  a  thesis  supported  by  ex- 
perience, whereas  this  volume  endeavors  to  trace 
the  experiences  through  which  various  conclusions 
were  forced  upon  me. 


CONTENTS 


Preface  ,  .  •  •  • 

CHAPTER 

I.  Earliest  Impressions 

II.  Influence  of  Lincoln 

III.  Boarding-school  Ideals      . 

IV.  The   Snare  of   Preparation 
V.  First  Days  at  Hull-House 

VI.  The  Subjective  Necessity  for  Social  Settlements 

VII.  Some  Early  Undertakings  at  Hull-House 

VIII.  Problems  of  Poverty 

IX.  A  Decade  of  Economic  Discussion 

X.  Pioneer  Labor  Legislation  in  Illinois 

XI.  Immigrants  and  their  Children 

XII.  TOLSTOYISM  .  .  .  • 

XIII.  Public  Activities  and  Investigations 

XIV.  Civic  Cooperation    . 
Xy.  The  Value  of  Social  Clubs 

XVI.  Arts  at  Hull-House 
XVII.      Echoes  of  the  Russian  Revolution 
XVIII.      Socialized  Education 


rAGE 

vii 


23 
43 
H 

e^ 

113 
129 

198 
231 
259 
281 
310 
342 

371 
400 

4^7 


PLATES 


Jane  Addams,  from  a  photograph  taken  in  1899     • 

John  H.  Addams,  from  a  photograph  taken  in  1880 

Ellen  Gates  Starr,  from  a  photograph  taken  in  1906 

A  Hull-House  Interior 

A  View  from  a  Hull-House  Window  . 

A  Spent  Old  Man  .... 

Sweatshop  Workers  .  .  . 

Chicago  River  at  Halsted  Street 

Polk  Street  opposite  Hull-House 

Julia  C.  Lathrop      .... 

A  Studio  in  Hull-House  Court  . 

A  View  between  Hull-House  Gymnasium  and  Theater 


Frontispiece 

FACING   PAGE 
22 

64 

88 
1 12 

154 
198 
258 
280 
310 

370 
426 


zm 


ILLUSTRATIONS   IN   THE   TEXT 


Birthplace,  Jane  Addams,  Cedarville,  Illinois 

Jane  Addams,  aged  Seven,  from  a  Photograph  of  1867 

Mill  at  Cedarville,  Illinois 

Stream  at  Cedarville,  IlHnois 

Old  Abe        .... 

Rockford  College,  Rockford,  Illinois 

Porto  del  Popolo,  Rome    . 

View  of  St.  Peter's 

Polk  Street  opposite  Hull-House 

South  Halsted  Street  opposite  Hull-House 

Consulting  the  Hull-House  Bulletin  Board,  from  a  Photograph 

by  Lewis  W.  Hine  . 
A  Boys'  Club  Member     . 
An  Italian  Woman  with  Grandchild 
Portrait,  Jane  Addams,  from  a  Charcoal  Drawing  by  Alice  Kel 

logg  Tyler  of  1892  . 
Main  Entrance  to  Hull-House    . 
Head  of  Slavic  Woman     . 
Head  of  Italian  Woman     . 
A  Doorway  in  Hull- House  Court 
Woman  and  Child  in  Hull-House  Reception  Room 

XV 


PAGE 

4 

7 

10 
22 
42 

44 
76 
88 

95 
96 

104. 
105 


114 
128 
134 
135 
149 

154 


xvi    ILLUSTRATIONS   IN  THE  TEXT 


In  a  Tenement  House,  Sick  Mother  and  Children  . 
A  Row  of  Nursery  Babies  .... 

A  Neighborhood  Alley      ..... 

Hull-House  on  Halsted  Street,  Apartment  House  in  Foreground 
An  Italian  Sweatshop  Worker     ..... 

Out  of  Work,  from  a  Drawing  by  Alice  Kellogg  Tyler    , 
Head  of  Immigrant  Woman        ..... 

Aniello    ......... 

Irish  Spinner  in  the  Hull-House  Labor  Museum 

Scandinavian  Weaver  in  the  Hull-House  Labor  Museum  . 

Italian  Spinner  in  the  Hull-House  Labor  Museum  . 

An  Italian  Grocery  opposite  Hull- House 

Sketches  of  Tolstoy  Mowing 

Head  of  Russian  Immigrant 

Rear  Tenement  in  Hull-House  Neighborhood 

An  Alley  near  Hull-House 

A  View  from  Hull-House  Window 

Alley  between  Hull-House  Buildings    . 

A  Window  in  the  Hull-House  Library 

An  Italian  Mother  and  Child 

Facade  of  Bowen  Hall 

A  Club  Child  listening  to  a  Story 

In  the  Hull-House  Studio,  from  a  Photograph  by  Lewis  W 


Hine      .... 

Exterior  Hull-House  Music  School 
In  the  Hull-House  Music  School 
Terrace  in  the  Hull-House  Court 
South  Halsted  Street 


ILLUSTRATIONS  IN  THE  TEXT    xvii 

PAGB 

Russian  Immigrant  on  Halsted   Street,   from  a  Photograph   by 

Lewis  W.  Hine         .  .  .  .  ,  .  .416 

Entrance  to  Hull-House  Courtyard      .  .  ,  .  .426 

Boy  at  Forge,  Hull-House  Boys'  Club,  from  a  Photograph  by 

Lewis  W.  Hine         .  .  .  .  .  .  .439 

Steps  to  Hull-House  Terrace      ......      447 

Waiting  in  the  Hull- House  Hall 453 


TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

CHAPTER  I 

Earliest  Impressions 

On  the  theory  that  our  genuine  impulses  may- 
be connected  with  our  childish  experiences,  that 
one's  bent  may  be  tracked  back  to  that  *' No- 
Man's  Land"  where  character  is  formless  but 
nevertheless  settling  into  definite  lines  of  future 
development,  I  begin  this  record  with  some  im- 
pressions of  my  childhood. 

All  of  these  are  directly  connected  with  my 
father,  although  of  course  I  recall  many  experiences 
apart  from  him.  I  was  one  of  the  younger  mem- 
bers of  a  large  family  and  an  eager  participant  in 
the  village  life,  but  because  my  father  was  so  dis- 
tinctly the  dominant  influence  and  because  it  is 
quite  impossible  to  set  forth  all  of  one's  early  im- 
pressions, it  has  seemed  simpler  to  string  these 
first  memories  on  that  single  cord.  Moreover,  it 
was  this  cord  which  not  only  held  fast  my  supreme 
affection,  but  also  first  drew  me  into  the  moral 
concerns  of  life,  and  later  afforded  a  clew  there  to 


2     TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

which  I  somewhat  wistfully  clung  in  the  intricacy, 
of  its  mazes.  | 

It  must  have  been  from  a  very  early  period  that 
I  recall  ''horrid  nights"  when  I  tossed  about  in 
my  bed  because  I  had  told  a  lie.  I  was  held  in  the 
grip  of  a  miserable  dread  of  death,  a  double  fear, 
first,  that  I  myself  should  die  in  my  sins  and  go 
straight  to  that  fiery  Hell  which  was  never  men- 
tioned at  home,  but  which  I  had  heard  all  about 
from  other  children,  and,  second,  that  my  father  — 
representing  the  entire  adult  world  which  I  had 
basely  deceived  —  should  himself  die  before  I  had 
time  to  tell  him.  My  only  method  of  obtaining 
relief  was  to  go  downstairs  to  my  father's  room 
and  make  full  confession.  The  high  resolve  to  do 
this  would  push  me  out  of  bed  and  carry  me 
down  the  stairs  without  a  touch  of  fear.  But  at 
the  foot  of  the  stairs  I  would  be  faced  by  the  awful 
necessity  of  passing  the  front  door  —  which  my 
father,  because  of  his  Quaker  tendencies,  did  not 
lock  —  and  of  crossing  the  wide  and  black  expanse 
of  the  living  room  in  order  to  reach  his  door.  I 
would  invariably  cling  to  the  newel  post  while 
I  contemplated  the  perils  of  the  situation,  compli- 
cated by  the  fact  that  the  literal  first  step  meant 
putting  my  bare  foot  upon  a  piece  of  oilcloth  in 
front  of  the  door,  only  a  few  inches  wide,  but  lying 
straight  in  my  path.  I  would  finally  reach  my 
father's  bedside  perfectly  breathless  and,  having 
panted  out  the  history  of  my  sin,  invariably  re- 


EARLIEST   IMPRESSIONS  3 

ceived  the  same  assurance  that  if  he  '^had  a  littlev\ 
girl  who  told  lies,"  he  was  very  glad  that  she  "felt|i 
too  bad  to  go  to  sleep  afterwards."  No  absolu- 
tion was  asked  for  nor  received,  but  apparently  the 
sense  that  the  knowledge  of  my  wickedness  was 
shared,  or  an  obscure  understanding  of  the  affec- 
tion which  underlay  the  grave  statement,  was 
sufficient,  for  I  always  went  back  to  bed  as  bold  as 
a  lion,  and  slept,  if  not  the  sleep  of  the  just,  at  least 
that  of  the  comforted. 

I  recall  an  incident  which  must  have  occurred 
before  I  was  seven  years  old,  for  the  mill  in  which 
my  father  transacted  his  business  that  day  was  \ 
closed  in  1867.  The  mill  stood  in  the  neighbor-  J 
ing  town  adjacent  to  its  poorest  quarter.  Before 
then  I  had  always  seen  the  little  city  of  ten 
thousand  people  with  the  admiring  eyes  of  a 
country  child,  and  it  had  never  occurred  to  me  that 
all  its  streets  were  not  as  bewilderingly  attrac- 
tive as  the  one  which  contained  the  glittering 
toyshop  and  the  confectioner.  On  that  day  I^had 
my  first  sight  of  the  poverty  which  implies'squalor^ 
and  felt  the  curious  distinction  between  the  ruSSy 
poverty  of  the  country  and  that  which  even  a 
small  city  presents  in  its  shabbiest  streets.  I 
remember  launching  at  my  father  the  pertinent 
inquiry  why  people  lived  in  such  horrid  little  houses 
so  close  together,  and  that  after  receiving  his  ex- 
planation I  declared  with  much  firmness  when  I 
grew  up  I  should,  of  course,  have  a  large  house,    1 


4      TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 


Homestead  at  Cedarville, 


EARLIEST   IMPRESSIONS 

but  it  would  not  be  built  among  the  other  large 
houses,   but    right    in    the    midst   of   horrid   litth 
houses  like  these. 

That  curious  sense  of  responsibility  for  carrying 
on  the  world's  affairs  which  little  children  often 
exhibit  because  ''the  old  man  clogs  our  earliest 
years,"  I  remember  in  myself  in  a  very  absurd 
manifestation.  I  dreamed  night  after  night  that 
every  one  in  the  world  was  dead  excepting  myself, 
and  that  upon  me  rested  the  responsibility  of  ^ 
making  a  wagon  wheel.  The  village  street  re-  . 
mained  as  usual,  the  village  blacksmith  shop  was 
"all  there,"  even  a  glowing  fire  upon  the  forge  and 
the  anvil  in  its  customary  place  near  the  door,  but 
no  human  being  was  within  sight.  They  had  all 
gone  around  the  edge  of  the  hill  to  the  village  ceme- 
tery, and  I  alone  remained  alive  in  the  deserted 
world.  I  ahvays  stood  in  the  same  spot  in  the 
blacksmith  shop,  darkly  pondering  as  to  how^  to 
begin,  and  never  once  did  I  know  how,  although  I 
fully  realized  that  the  affairs  of  the  world  could  not 
be  resumed  until  at  least  one  wheel  should  be  made 
and  something  started.  Every  victim  of  night- 
mare is,  I  imagine,  overwhelmed  by  an  excessive 
sense  of  responsibility  and  the  consciousness  of  a 
fearful  handicap  in  the  effort  to  perform  what  is 
required ;  but  perhaps  never  were  the  odds  more 
heavily  against  ''a  ^ardej  of  the  world"  than  in 
these  reiterated  dreams'^of  mine,  doubtless  com- 
pounded  in   equal   parts   of  a   childish  version  of 


6     TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

Robinson  Crusoe  and  of  the  end-of-the-world  pre- 
dictions of  the  Second  Adventists,  a  few  of  whom 
were  found  in  the  village.  The  next  morning  would 
often  find  me,  a  delicate  little  girl  of  six,  with  the 
further  disability  of  a  curved  spine,  standing  in  the 
doorway  of  the  village  blacksmith  shop,  anxiously 
watching  the  burly,  red-shirted  figure  at  work.  I 
would  store  my  mind  with  such  details  of  the  process 
of  making  wheels  as  I  could  observe,  and  some- 
times I  plucked  up  courage  to  ask  for  more.  "Do 
you  always  have  to  sizzle  the  iron  in  water  .^" 
I  would  ask,  thinking  how  horrid  it  would  be  to  do. 
"Sure  !"  the  good-natured  blacksmith  would  reply, 
"that  makes  the  iron  hard."  I  would  sigh  heavily 
and  walk  away,  bearing  my  responsibility  as  best 
I  could,  and  this  of  course  I  confided  to  no  one,  for 
there  is  something  too  mysterious  in  the  burden  of 
"the  winds  that  come  from  the  fields  of  sleep"  to 
be  communicated,  although  it  is  at  the  same  time 
too  heavy  a  burden  to  be  borne  alone. 

My  great  veneration  and  pride  in  my  father 
manifested  itself  in  curious  ways.  On  several 
Sundays,  doubtless  occurring  In  two  or  three 
different  years,  the  Union  Sunday  School  of  the 
village  was  visited  by  strangers,  some  of  those 
"strange  people"  who  live  outside  a  child's  realm, 
yet  constantly  thrill  it  by  their  close  approach. 
My  father  taught  the  large  Bible  class  In  the  left- 
hand  corner  of  the  church  next  to  the  pulpit,  and 
to  my  eyes  at  least,  was  a  most  imposing  figure  in 


EARLIEST   IMPRESSIONS 


his  Sunday  frock  coat,  his  fine  head  rising  high 
above  all  the  others.  I  imagined  that  the  stran- 
gers were  filled  with  admiration  for  this  dignified 
person,  and  I  prayed  with  all  my  heart  that  the 
ugly,  pigeon-toed  little  girl,  whose  crooked  back 
obliged  her  to 
walk  with  her 
head  held  very 
much  upon  one 
side,  would  never 
be  pointed  out  to 
these  visitors  as 
the  daughter  of 
this  fine  man.  In 
order  to  lessen 
the  possibility  of 
a  connection 
being  made,  on 
these  particular 
Sundays  I  did  not 
walk  beside  my 
father,  although 
this  walk  was  the 

great  event  of  the  week,  but  attached  myself  firmly 
to  the  side  of  my  Uncle  James  Addams,  in  the  hope 
that  I  should  be  mistaken  for  his  child,  or  at  least 
that  I  should  not  remain  so  conspicuously  unat- 
tached that  troublesome  questions  might  identify 
an  Ugly  Duckling  with  her  imposing  parent.  My 
uncle,  who  had  many  children  of  his  own,  must 


8    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

have  been  mildly  surprised  at  this  unwonted  atten- 
tion, but  he  would  look  down  kindly  at  me,  and  say, 
''So  you  are  going  to  walk  with  me  to-day?" 
"Yes,  please.  Uncle  James,"  would  be  my  meek 
reply.  He  fortunately  never  explored  my  motives, 
nor  do  I  remember  that  my  father  ever  did,  so  that 
in  all  probability  my  machinations  have  been  safe 
from  public  knowledge  until  this  hour. 

It  is  hard  to  account  for  the  manifestations  of  a 
child's  adoring  affection,  so  emotional,  so  irrational, 
so  tangled  with  the  affairs  of  the  imagination.  I 
simply  could  not  endure  the  thought  that  ''strange 
people"  should  know  that  my  handsome  father 
owned  this  homely  little  girl.  But  even  in  my 
chivalric  desire  to  protect  him  from  his  fate,  I  was 
not  quite  easy  in  the  sacrifice  of  my  uncle,  although 
I  quieted  my  scruples  with  the  reflection  that  the 
contrast  was  less  marked  and  that,  anyway,  his 
own  little  girl  "was  not  so  very  pretty."  I  do  not 
know  that  I  commonly  dwelt  much  upon  my 
personal  appearance,  save  as  it  thrust  itself  as  an 
incongruity  into  my  father's  life,  and  in  spite  of 
unending  evidence  to  the  contrary,  there  were 
even  black  moments  when  I  allowed  myself  to 
speculate  as  to  whether  he  might  not  share  the 
feeling.  Happily,  however,  this  specter  was  laid 
before  it  had  time  to  grow  into  a  morbid  familiar 
by  a  very  trifling  incident.  One  day  I  met  my 
father  coming  out  of  his  bank  on  the  main  street 
of    the  neighboring  city  which  seemed  to  me  a 


EARLIEST   IMPRESSIONS  9 

veritable  whirlpool  of  society  and  commerce. 
With  a  playful  touch  of  exaggeration,  he  lifted  his 
high  and  shining  silk  hat  and  made  me  an  imposing 
bow.  This  distinguished  public  recognition,  this 
totally  unnecessary  identification  among  a  mass  of 
''strange  people"  who  couldn't  possibly  know  un- 
less he  himself  made  the  sign,  suddenly  filled  me 
with  a  sense  of  the  absurdity  of  the  entire  feeling. 
It  may  not  even  then  have  seemed  as  absurd  as  It 
really  was,  but  at  least  It  seemed  enough  so  to 
collapse  or  to  pass  into  the  limbo  of  forgotten 
specters. 

I  made  still  other  almost  equally  grotesque 
attempts  to  express  this  doglike  affection.  The 
house  at  the  end  of  the  village  in  which  I  was  born, 
and  which  was  my  home  until  I  moved  to  Hull- 
House,  in  my  earliest  childhood  had  opposite  to 
it  —  only  across  the  road  and  then  across  a  little 
stretch  of  greensward  —  two  mills  belonging  to  my 
father ;  one  flour  mill,  to  which  the  various  grains 
were  brought  by  the  neighboring  farmers,  and  one 
sawmill,  In  which  the  logs  of  the  native  timber  were 
sawed  into  lumber.  The  latter  offered  the  great 
excitement  of  sitting  on  a  log  while  It  slowly  ap- 
proached the  buzzing  saw  which  was  cutting  It 
into  slabs,  and  of  getting  off  just  in  time  to  escape 
a  sudden  and  gory  death.  But  the  flouring  mill 
was  much  more  beloved.  It  was  full  of  dusky, 
floury  places  which  we  adored,  of  empty  bins  in 
which  we  might  play  house;    it  had  a  basement, 


lo    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 


•/' 


Mill  at  Cedarville. 


/- 


EARLIEST  IMPRESSIONS  ii 

with  piles  of  bran  and  shorts  which  were  almost  as 
good  as  sand  to  play  in,  whenever  the  miller  let 
us  wet  the  edges  of  the  pile  with  water  brought  in 
his  sprinkling  pot  from  the  mill-race. 

In  addition  to  these  fascinations  was  the  associa- 
tion of  the  mill  with  my  father's  activities,  for  doubt- 
less at  that  time  I  centered  upon  him  all  that  care- 
ful Imitation  which  a  little  girl  ordinarily  gives  to 
her  mother's  ways  and  habits.  My  mother  had 
died  when  I  was  a  baby  and  my  father's  second 
marriage  did  not  occur  until  my  eighth  year. 

I  had  a  consuming  ambition  to  possess  a  miller's 
thumb,  and  would  sit  contentedly  for  a  long  time 
rubbing  between  my  thumb  and  fingers  the  ground 
wheat  as  It  fell  from  between  the  millstones,  before 
it  was  taken  up  on  an  endless  chain  of  mysterious 
little  buckets  to  be  bolted  Into  flour.  I  believe 
I  have  never  since  wanted  anything  more  desper- 
ately than  I  wanted  my  right  thumb  to  be  flat- 
tened, as  my  father's  had  become,  during  his  earlier 
years  of  a  miller's  life.  Somewhat  discouraged  by 
the  slow  process  of  structural  modification,  I  also 
took  measures  to  secure  on  the  backs  of  my  hands 
the  tiny  purple  and  red  spots  which  are  always 
found  on  the  hands  of  the  miller  who  dresses  mill- 
stones. The  marks  on  my  father's  hands  had  grown 
faint,  but  were  quite  visible  when  looked  for,  and 
seemed  to  me  so  desirable  that  they  must  be  pro- 
cured at  all  costs.  Even  when  playing  in  our  house 
or  yard,  I  could  always  tell  when  the  millstones  were 


12    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

being  dressed,  because  the  rumbling  of  the  mill 
then  stopped,  and  there  were  few  pleasures  I 
would  not  instantly  forego,  rushing  at  once  to  the 
mill,  that  I  might  spread  out  my  hands  near  the 
millstones  in  the  hope  that  the  little  hard  flints 
flying  from  the  miller's  chisel  would  light  upon  their 
backs  and  make  the  longed-for  marks.  I  used 
hotly  to  accuse  the  German  miller,  my  dear  friend 
Ferdinand,  ''of  trying  not  to  hit  my  hands,"  but  he 
scornfully  replied  that  he  could  not  hit  them  if  he 
did  try,  and  that  they  were  too  little  to  be  of  use 
In  a  mill  anyway.  Although  I  hated  his  teasing, 
I  never  had  the  courage  to  confess  my  real  purpose. 
This  sincere  tribute  of  imitation,  which  affec- 
tion offers  to  its  adored  object,  had  later,  I 
hope,  subtler  manifestations,  but  certainly  these 
first  ones  were  altogether  genuine.  In  this  case, 
too,  I  doubtless  contributed  my  share  to  that 
stream  of  admiration  which  our  generation  so 
generously  poured  forth  for  the  self-made  man.  I 
was  consumed  by  a  wistful  desire  to  apprehend  the 
hardships  of  my  father's  earlier  life  in  that  far- 
away time  when  he  had  been  a  miller's  apprentice. 
I  knew  that  he  still  woke  up  punctually  at  three 
o'clock  because  for  so  many  years  he  had  taken  his 
turn  at  the  mill  in  the  early  morning,  and  if  by 
chance  I  awoke  at  the  same  hour,  as  curiously 
enough  I  often  did,  I  imagined  him  in  the  early 
dawn  in  my  uncle's  old  mill  reading  through  the 
entire  village  library,  book  after  book,  beginning 


EARLIEST   IMPRESSIONS  13 

with  the  lives  of  the  signers  of  the  Declaration  of 
Independence.  Copies  of  the  same  books,  mostly 
bound  in  calfskin,  were  to  be  found  In  the  library 
below,  and  I  courageously  resolved  that  I  too  would 
read  them  all  and  try  to  understand  life  as  he  did. 
I  did  In  fact  later  begin  a  course  of  reading  In  the 
early  morning  hours,  but  I  was  caught  by  some 
fantastic  notion  of  chronological  order  and  early 
legendary  form.  Pope's  translation  of  the  ''Iliad," 
even  followed  by  Dryden's  "Virgil,"  did  not  leave 
behind  the  residuum  of  wisdom  for  which  I  longed, 
and  I  finally  gave  them  up  for  a  thick  book  entitled 
"The  History  of  the  World"  as  affording  a  shorter 
and  an  easier  path. 

Although  I  constantly  confided  my  sins  and  per- 
plexities to  my  father,  there  are  only  a  few  occa- 
sions on  which  I  remember  having  received  direct 
advice  or  admonition ;  it  may  easily  be  true,  how- 
ever, that  I  have  forgotten  the  latter.  In  the 
manner  of  many  seekers  after  advice  who  enjoy- 
ably  set  forth  their  situation  but  do  not  really 
listen  to  the  advice  itself.  I  can  remember  an 
admonition  on  one  occasion,  however,  when,  as  a 
little  girl  of  eight  years,  arrayed  In  a  new  cloak, 
gorgeous  beyond  anything  I  had  ever  worn  before, 
I  stood  before  my  father  for  his  approval.  I  was 
much  chagrined  by  his  remark  that  it  was  a  very 
pretty  cloak  —  In  fact  so  much  prettier  than  any 
cloak  the  other  little  girls  In  the  Sunday  School 
had,  that  he  would  advise  me  to  wear  my  old  cloak, 


14    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

which  would  keep  me  quite  as  warm,  with  the 
added  advantage  of  not  making  the  other  little 
girls  feel  badly.  I  complied  with  the  request 
but  I  fear  without  inner  consent,  and  I  certainly 
was  quite  without  the  joy  of  self-sacrifice  as  I 
walked  soberly  through  the  village  street  by  the 
side  of  my  counselor.  My  mind  was  busy,  how- 
ever, with  the  old  question  eternally  suggested 
by  the  inequalities  of  the  human  lot.  Onl}^  as  we 
neared  the  church  door  did  I  venture  to  ask  what 
could  be  done  about  it,  receiving  the  reply  that  it 
might  never  be  righted  so  far  as  clothes  went, 
but  that  people  might  be  equal  in  things  that 
mattered  much  more  than  clothes,  the  affairs  of 
education  and  religion,  for  instance,  which  we 
attended  to  when  we  went  to  school  and  church,  and 
that  it  was  very  stupid  to  wear  the  sort  of  clothes 
that  made  it  harder  to  have  equality  even  there. 
It  must  have  been  a  little  later  when  I  held  a 
conversation  with  my  father  upon  the  doctrine  of 
^oreordination,  which  at  one  time  very  much  per- 
plexed my  childish  mind.  After  setting  the  diffi- 
culty before  him  and  complaining  that  I  could  not 
make  it  out,  although  my  best  friend  "understood 
it  perfectly,"  I  settled  down  to  hear  his  argument, 
having  no  doubt  that  he  could  make  it  quite  clear. 
To  my  delighted  surprise,  for  any  intimation  that 
our  minds  were  on  an  equality  lifted  me  high  indeed, 
he  said  that  he  feared  that  he  and  I  did  not  have  the 
kind   of  mind   that  would   ever  understand   fore- 


EARLIEST   IMPRESSIONS  15   n 

ordination  very  well  and  advised  me  not  to  give 
too  much  time  to  it ;  but  he  then  proceeded  to  say  - 
other  things  of  which  the  final  impression  left  upon 
my  mind  was,  that  it  did  not  matter  much  whether 
one  understood  foreordination  or  not,  but  that  it 
was  very  important  not  to  pretend  to  understand 
what  you  didn't  understand  and  that  you  must 
always  be  honest  with  yourself  inside,  whatever 
happened.  Perhaps  on  the  whole  as  valuable  a 
lesson  as  the  shorter  catechism  itself  contains. 

My  memory  merges  this  early  conversation  on 
religious  doctrine  into  one  which  took  place  years 
later  when  I  put  before  my  father  the  situation  in 
which  I  found  myself  at  boarding  school  when 
under  great  evangelical  pressure,  and  once  again  I 
heard  his  testimony  in  favor  of  "mental  integrity 
above  everything  else." 

At  the  time  we  were  driving  through  a  piece  of 
timber  in  which  the  wood  choppers  had  been  at 
work  during  the  winter,  and  so  earnestly  were  we 
talking  that  he  suddenly  drew  up  the  horses  to 
find  that  he  did  not  know  where  he  was.  We  were 
both  entertained  by  the  incident,  I  that  my  father 
had  been  "lost  in  his  own  timber"  so  that  various 
cords  of  wood  must  have  escaped  his  practiced  eye, 
and  he  on  his  side  that  he  should  have  become  so 
absorbed  in  this  maze  of  youthful  speculation.  We 
were  in  high  spirits  as  we  emerged  from  the  tender 
green  of  the  spring  woods  into  the  clear  light  of 
day,  and  as  we  came  back  into  the  main  road  I 
categorically  asked  him  :  — 


i6    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

''What  are  you  ?  What  do  you  say  when  people 
ask  you  ?" 

His  eyes  twinkled  a  little  as  he  soberly  replied: 

"I  am  a  Quaker." 

"But  that  isn't  enough  to  say,"  I  urged. 

"Very  well,"  he  added,  "to  people  who  insist 
upon  details,  as  some  one  is  doing  now,  I  add  that 
I  am  a  Hicksite  Quaker ; "  and  not  another  word 
on  the  weighty  subject  could  I  induce  him  to  utter. 

These  early  recollections  are  set  in  a  scene  of 
rural  beauty,  unusual  at  least  for  Illinois.  The 
prairie  round  the  village  was  broken  into  hills,  one 
of  them  crowned  by  pine  woods,  grown  up  from  a 
bag  full  of  Norway  pine  seeds  sown  by  my  father 
in  1844,  the  very  year  he  came  to  Illinois,  a  testi- 
mony perhaps  that  the  most  vigorous  pioneers 
gave  at  least  an  occasional  thought  to  beauty. 
The  banks  of  the  mill  stream  rose  into  high  bluffs 
too  perpendicular  to  be  climbed  without  skill, 
and  containing  caves  of  which  one  at  least  was  so 
black  that  it  could  not  be  explored  without  the  aid 
of  a  candle ;  and  there  was  a  deserted  limekiln 
which  became  associated  in  my  mind  with  the 
unpardonable  sin  of  Hawthorne's  "Lime-Burner." 
My  stepbrother  and  I  carried  on  games  and  cru- 
sades which  lasted  week  after  week,  and  even  sum- 
mer after  summer,  as  only  free-ranging  country 
children  can  do.  It  may  be  in  contrast  to  this 
that  one  of  the  most  piteous  aspects  in  the  life  of 
city  children,  as  I  have  seen  it  in  the  neighborhood 


EARLIEST   IMPRESSIONS  17    ^ 

of  Hull-House,  is  the  constant  interruption  to  their 
play  which  is  inevitable  on  the  streets,  so  that  it  -^ 
can  never  have  any  continuity,  —  the  most  elabo- 
rate "plan  or  chart"  or  ''fragment  from  their  dream 
of  human  life"  is  sure  to  be  rudely  destroyed  by  the 
passing  traffic.  Although  they  start  over  and  over 
again,  even  the  most  vivacious  become  worn  out 
at  last  and  take  to  that  passive  "standing  'round" 
varied  by  rude  horse-play,  which  in  time  becomes  ^y 
so  characteristic  of  city  children. 

We  had  of  course  our  favorite  places  and  trees 
and  birds  and  flowers.  It  is  hard  to  reproduce  the 
companionship  which  children  establish  with  na- 
ture, but  certainly  it  is  much  too  unconscious  and 
intimate  to  come  under  the  head  of  aesthetic  appre- 
ciation or  anything  of  the  sort.  When  we  said 
that  the  purple  wind-flowers  —  the  anemone  pat- 
ens—  "looked  as  if  the  winds  had  made  them," 
we  thought  much  more  of  the  fact  that  they  were 
wind-born  than  that  they  were  beautiful  :  we 
clapped  our  hands  in  sudden  joy  over  the  soft 
radiance  of  the  rainbow,  but  its  enchantment  lay 
in  our  half  belief  that  a  pot  of  gold  was  to  be  found 
at  its  farther  end ;  we  yielded  to  a  soft  melancholy 
when  we  heard  the  w^hippoorwill  in  the  early  twi- 
light, but  while  he  aroused  in  us  vague  longings  of 
which  we  spoke  solemnly,  we  felt  no  beauty  in  his  call. 

We  erected  an  altar  beside  the  stream,  to  which 
for  several  years  we  brought  all  the  snakes  we  killed 
during  our  excursions,  no  matter  how  long  the  toil- 


1 8     TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

some  journey  which  we  had  to  make  with  a  limp 
snake  dangHng  between  two  sticks.  I  remember 
rather  vaguely  the  ceremonial  performed  upon  this 
altar  one  autumn  day,  when  we  brought  as  further 
tribute  one  out  of  every  hundred  of  the  black  wal- 
nuts which  we  had  gathered,  and  then  poured  over 
the  whole  a  pitcher  full  of  cider,  fresh  from  the 
cider  mill  on  the  barn  floor.  I  think  we  had  also 
burned  a  favorite  book  or  two  upon  this  pyre  of 
stones.  The  entire  aifstir  carried  on  with  such 
solemnity  was  probably  the  result  of  one  of  those 
imperative  impulses  under  whose  compulsion  chil- 
dren seek  a  ceremonial  which  shall  express  their 
sense  of  identification  with  man's  primitive  life 
and  their  familiar  kinship  with  the  remotest  past. 

Long  before  we  had  begun  the  study  of  Latin 
at  the  village  school,  my  brother  and  I  had 
learned  the  Lord's  Prayer  in  Latin  out  of  an  old 
copy  of  the  Vulgate,  and  gravely  repeated  it  every 
night  in  an  execrable  pronunciation  because  it 
seemed  to  us  more  religious  than  "plain  English." 

When,  however,  I  really  prayed,  what  I  saw  be- 
fore my  eyes  was  a  most  outrageous  picture  which 
adorned  a  song-book  used  in  Sunday  School,  por- 
traying the  Lord  upon  His  throne  surrounded  by 
tiers  and  tiers  of  saints  and  angels  all  in  a  blur  of 
yellow.  I  am  ashamed  to  tell  how  old  I  was  when 
that  picture  ceased  to  appear  before  my  eyes,  espe- 
cially when  moments  of  terror  compelled  me  to 
ask  protection  from  the  heavenly  powers. 


EARLIEST   IMPRESSIONS  19 

I  recall  with  great  distinctness  my  first  direct 
contact  with  death  when  I  was  fifteen  years  old  : 
Polly  was  an  old  nurse  who  had  taken  care  of  my 
mother  and  had  followed  her  to  frontier  Illinois  to 
help  rear  a  second  generation  of  children.  She 
had  always  lived  in  our  house,  but  made  annual 
visits  to  her  cousins  on  a  farm  a  few  miles  north 
of  the  village.  During  one  of  these  visits,  word 
came  to  us  one  Sunday  evening  that  Polly  was 
dying,  and  for  a  number  of  reasons  I  was  the  only 
person  able  to  go  to  her.  I  left  the  lamp-lit,  warm 
house  to  be  driven  four  miles  through  a  blinding 
storm  which  every  minute  added  more  snow  to  the 
already  high  drifts,  with  a  sense  of  starting  upon  a 
fateful  errand.  An  hour  after  my  arrival  all  of 
the  cousin's  family  went  downstairs  to  supper,  and 
I  was  left  alone  to  watch  with  Polly.  The  square, 
old-fashioned  chamber  in  the  lonely  farmhouse 
was  very  cold  and  still,  with  nothing  to  be  heard 
but  the  storm  outside.  Suddenly  the  great  change 
came.  I  heard  a  feeble  call  of  *' Sarah,"  my 
mother's  name,  as  the  dying  eyes  were  turned  upon 
me,  followed  by  a  curious  breathing  and  in  place 
of  the  face  familiar  from  my  earliest  childhood  and 
associated  with  homely  household  cares,  there 
lay  upon  the  pillow  strange,  august  features, 
stern  and  withdrawn  from  all  the  small  affairs  of 
life.  That  sense  of  solitude,  of  being  unsheltered 
in  a  wide  world  of  relentless  and  elemental  forces 
which  is  at  the  basis  of  childhood's  timidity  and 


20    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

which  is  far  from  outgrown  at  fifteen,  seized  me 
irresistibly  before  I  could  reach  the  narrow  stairs 
and  summon  the  family  from  below. 

As  I  was  driven  home  in  the  winter  storm,  the 
wind  through  the  trees  seemed  laden  with  a  pass- 
ing soul  and  the  riddle  of  life  and  death  pressed 
hard ;  once  to  be  young,  to  grow  old  and  to  die, 
everything  came  to  that,  and  then  a  mysterious 
journey  out  into  the  Unknown.  Did  she  mind  far- 
ing forth  alone  ?  Would  the  journey  perhaps  end  in 
something  as  familiar  and  natural  to  the  aged  and 
dying  as  life  is  to  the  young  and  living  ^  Through 
all  the  drive  and  indeed  throughout  the  night 
these  thoughts  were  pierced  by  sharp  worry,  a 
sense  of  faithlessness  because  I  had  forgotten  the 
text  Polly  had  confided  to  me  long  before  as  the 
one  from  which  she  wished  her  funeral  sermon  to 
be  preached.  My  comfort  as  usual  finally  came  from 
my  father,  who  pointed  out  what  was  essential  and 
what  was  of  little  avail  even  in  such  a  moment  as  this, 
and  while  he  was  much  too  wise  to  grow  dogmatic 
upon  the  great  theme  of  death,  I  felt  a  new  fellow- 
ship with  him  because  we  had  discussed  it  together. 

Perhaps  I  may  record  here  my  protest  against 
the  efforts,  so  often  made,  to  shield  children  and 
young  people  from  all  that  has  to  do  with  death  and 
sorrow,  to  give  them  a  good  time  at  all  hazards  on 
the  assumption  that  the  ills  of  life  will  come  soon 
enough.  Young  people  themselves  often  resent 
this  attitude  on  the  part  of  their  elders  ;    they  feel 


EARLIEST   IMPRESSIONS  21 

set  aside  and  belittled  as  if  they  were  denied  the 
common  human  experiences.  They  too  wish  to 
climb  steep  stairs  and  to  eat  their  bread  with  tears, 
and  they  imagine  that  the  problems  of  existence  which 
so  press  upon  them  in  pensive  moments  would  be 
less  insoluble  in  the  light  of  these  great  happenings. 
An  incident  which  stands  out  clearly  in  my  mind 
as  an  exciting  suggestion  of  the  great  world  of 
moral  enterprise  and  serious  undertakings  must 
have  occurred  earlier  than  this,  for  in  1872,  when  I 
was  not  yet  twelve  years  old,  I  came  into  my 
father's  room  one  morning  to  find  him  sitting  beside 
the  fire  with  a  newspaper  in  his  hand,  looking  very 
solemn ;  and  upon  my  eager  inquiry  what  had 
happened,  he  told  me  that  Joseph  Mazzini  was 
dead.  I  had  never  even  heard  Mazzini's  name, 
and  after  being  told  about  him  I  was  inclined  to 
grow  argumentative,  asserting  that  my  father  did 
not  know  him,  that  he  was  not  an  American,  and 
that  I  could  not  understand  why  we  should  be 
expected  to  feel  badly  about  him.  It  is  impos- 
sible to  recall  the  conversation  with  the  complete 
breakdown  of  my  cheap  arguments,  but  in  the  end 
I  obtained  that  which  I  have  ever  regarded  as  a 
valuable  possession,  a  sense  of  the  genuine  relation- 
ship which  may  exist  between  men  who  share  large 
hopes  and  like  desires,  even  though  they  differ  in 
nationality,  language,  and  creed  ;  that  those  things 
count  for  absolutely  nothing  between  groups  of 
men  who  are  trying  to  abolish  slavery  in  America 


22    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

or  to  throw  off  Hapsburg  oppression  in  Italy.  At 
any  rate,  I  was  heartily  ashamed  of  my  meager 
notion  of  patriotism,  and  I  came  out  of  the  room 
exhilarated  with  the  consciousness  that  impersonal 
and  international  relations  are  actual  facts  and  not 
mere  phrases.  I  was  filled  with  pride  that  I  knew 
a  man  who  held  converse  with  great  minds  and 
who  really  sorrowed  and  rejoiced  over  happenings 
across  the  sea.  I  never  recall  those  early  conversa- 
tions with  my  father,  nor  a  score  of  others  like 
them,  but  there  comes  into  my  mind  a  line  from 
Mrs.  Browning  in  which  a  daughter  describes  her 
relations  with  her  father  :  — 

"  He  wrapt  me  in  his  large 
Man's  doublet,  careless  did  it  fit  or  no." 


John  H.  Addams. 


CHAPTER   II 

Influence  of  Lincoln 

I  SUPPOSE  all  the  children  who  were  born  about 
the  time  of  the  Civil  War  have  recollections  quite 
unlike  those  of  the  children  who  are  living  now. 
Although  I  was  but  four  and  a  half  years  old  when 
Lincoln  died,  I  distinctly  remember  the  day  when 
I  found  on  our  two  white  gate  posts  American 
flags  companioned  with  black.  I  tumbled  down 
on  the  harsh  gravel  walk  in  my  eager  rush  into  the 
house  to  inquire  what  they  were  "there  for."  To 
my  amazement  I  found  my  father  in  tears,  some- 
thing that  I  had  never  seen  before,  having  assumed, 
as  all  children  do,  that  grown-up  people  never 
cried.  The  two  flags,  my  father's  tears  and  his 
impressive  statement  that  the  greatest  man  in  the 
world  had  died,  constituted  my  initiation,  my  bap- 
tism, as  it  were,  into  the  thrilling  and  solemn 
Interests  of  a  world  lying  quite  outside  the  two  white 
gate  posts.  The  great  war  touched  children  in 
many  ways  :  I  remember  an  engraved  roster  of 
names,  headed  by  the  words  "Addams'  Guard," 
and  the  whole  surmounted  by  the  insignia  of  the 
American  eagle  clutching  many  flags,  which  always 
hung  in  the  family  living-room.     As  children  we 

23 


24    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

used  to  read  this  list  of  names  again  and  again. 
We  could  reach  it  only  by  dint  of  putting  the  family 
Bible  on  a  chair  and  piling  the  dictionary  on  top 
of  it ;  using  the  Bible  to  stand  on  was  always 
accompanied  by  a  little  thrill  of  superstitious  awe, 
although  we  carefully  put  the  dictionary  above 
that  our  profane  feet  might  touch  it  alone.  Having 
brought  the  roster  within  reach  of  our  eager  fingers, 
—  fortunately  it  was  glazed,  —  we  would  pick  out 
the  names  of  those  who  ^'had  fallen  on  the  field" 
from  those  who  ''had  come  back  from  the  war," 
and  from  among  the  latter  those  whose  children 
were  our  schoolmates.  When  drives  were  planned, 
we  would  say,  "Let  us  take  this  road,"  that  we 
might  pass  the  farm  where  a  soldier  had  once  lived  ; 
if  flowers  from  the  garden  were  to  be  given  away, 
we  would  want  them  to  go  to  the  mother  of  one 
of  those  heroes  whose  names  we  knew  from  the 
"Addams'  Guard."  If  a  guest  should  become  in- 
terested in  the  roster  on  the  wall,  he  was  at  once  led 
by  the  eager  children  to  a  small  picture  of  Colonel 
Davis  which  hung  next  the  opposite  window,  that 
he  might  see  the  brave  Colonel  of  the  Regiment. 
The  introduction  to  the  picture  of  the  one-armed 
man  seemed  to  us  a  very  solemn  ceremony,  and 
long  after  the  guest  was  tired  of  listening,  we  would 
tell  each  other  all  about  the  local  hero,  who  at  the 
head  of  his  troops  had  suffered  wounds  unto  death. 
We  liked  very  much  to  talk  to  a  gentle  old  lady  who 
lived   in  a  white  farmhouse  a   mile  north  of  the 


INFLUENCE   OF    LINCOLN  25 

village.  She  was  the  mother  of  the  village  hero, 
Tommy,  and  used  to  tell  us  of  her  long  anxiety 
during  the  spring  of  '62 ;  how  she  waited  day  after 
day  for  the  hospital  to  surrender  up  her  son,  each 
morning  airing  the  white  homespun  sheets  and 
holding  the  little  bedroom  in  immaculate  readiness. 
It  was  after  the  battle  of  Fort  Donelson  that 
Tommy  was  wounded  and  had  been  taken  to  the 
hospital  at  Springfield  ;  his  father  went  down  to 
him  and  saw  him  getting  worse  each  wxek,  until 
it  was  clear  that  he  was  going  to  die ;  but  there 
was  so  much  red  tape  about  the  department,  and 
affairs  were  so  confused,  that  his  discharge  could 
not  be  procured.  At  last  the  hospital  surgeon 
intimated  to  his  father  that  he  should  quietly  take 
him  away  ;  a  man  as  sick  as  that,  it  would  be  all 
right ;  but  when  they  told  Tommy,  weak  as  he 
was,  his  eyes  flashed,  and  he  said,  "No,  sir;  I  will 
go  out  of  the  front  door  or  I'll  die  here."  Of 
course  after  that  every  man  in  the  hospital  worked 
for  it,  and  in  two  weeks  he  was  honorably  dis- 
charged. When  he  came  home  at  last,  his  mother's 
heart  was  broken  to  see  him  so  wan  and  changed. 
She  would  tell  us  of  the  long  quiet  days  that  fol- 
lowed his  return,  with  the  windows  open  that  the 
dying  eyes  might  look  over  the  orchard  slope  to  the 
meadow  beyond  where  the  younger  brothers  were 
mowing  the  early  hay.  She  told  us  of  those  days 
when  his  school  friends  from  the  Academy  flocked 
in  to  see  him,  their  old  acknowledged  leader,  and  of 


26    TWENTY   YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

the  burning  words  of  earnest  patriotism  spoken 
in  the  crowded  little  room,  so  that  in  three  months 
the  Academy  was  almost  deserted  and  the  new 
Company  who  marched  away  in  the  autumn  took 
as  drummer  boy  Tommy's  third  brother,  who  was 
only  seventeen  and  too  young  for  a  regular.  She 
remembered  the  still  darker  days  that  followed, 
when  the  bright  drummer  boy  was  in  Anderson- 
ville  prison,  and  little  by  little  she  learned  to  be 
reconciled  that  Tommy  was  safe  in  the  peaceful 
home  graveyard. 

However  much  we  were  given  to  talk  of  war 
heroes,  we  always  fell  silent  as  we  approached  an 
isolated  farmhouse  in  which  two  old  people  lived 
alone.  Five  of  their  sons  had  enlisted  in  the  Civil 
War,  and  only  the  youngest  had  returned  alive  in 
the  spring  of  1865.  In  the  autumn  of  the  same 
year,  when  he  was  hunting  for  wild  ducks  in  a  swamp 
on  the  rough  little  farm  itself,  he  was  accidentally 
shot  and  killed,  and  the  old  people  were  left  alone 
to  struggle  with  the  half-cleared  land  as  best  they 
might.  When  we  were  driven  past  this  forlorn 
little  farm  our  childish  voices  always  dropped  into 
speculative  whisperings  as  to  how  the  accident 
could  have  happened  to  this  remaining  son  out  of 
all  the  men  in  the  world,  to  him  who  had  escaped 
so  many  chances  of  death  !  Our  young  hearts 
swelled  in  first  rebellion  against  that  which  Walter 
,  Pater  calls  "the  inexplicable  shortcoming  or  mis- 
7  adventure  on  the  part  of  life  itself"  ;  we  were  over- 


INFLUENCE   OF   LINCOLN  27 

whelmingly  oppressed  by  that  grief  of  things  as  they 
are,  so  much  more  mysterious  and  intolerable  than 
those  griefs  which  we  think  dimly  to  trace  to  man's 
own  wrongdoing. 

It  was  well  perhaps  that  life  thus  early  gave  me 
a  hint  of  one  of  her  most  obstinate  and  insoluble 
riddles,  for  I  have  sorely  needed  the  sense  of 
universality  thus  imparted  to  that  mysterious  in- 
justice, the  burden  of  which  we  are  all  forced  to 
bear  and  with  which  I  have  become  only  too 
familiar. 

My  childish  admiration  for  Lincoln  is  closely 
associated  with  a  visit  made  to  the  war  eagle.  Old 
Abe,  who,  as  we  children  well  knew,  lived  in  the 
state  capitol  of  Wisconsin,  only  sixty-five  miles 
north  of  our  house,  really  no  farther  than  an  eagle 
could  easily  fly  !  He  had  been  carried  by  the 
Eighth  Wisconsin  Regiment  through  the  entire 
war,  and  now  dwelt  an  honored  pensioner  in  the 
state  building  itself. 

Many  times,  standing  in  the  north  end  of  our 
orchard,  which  was  only  twelve  miles  from  that 
mysterious  line  which  divided  Illinois  from  Wis- 
consin, we  anxiously  scanned  the  deep  sky,  hoping 
to  see  Old  Abe  fly  southward  right  over  our  apple 
trees,  for  it  was  clearly  possible  that  he  might  at 
any  moment  escape  from  his  keeper,  who,  although 
he  had  been  a  soldier  and  a  sentinel,  would  have  to 
sleep  sometimes.  We  gazed  with  thrilled  interest 
at  one  speck  after  another  in  the  flawless  sky,  but 


28     TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

although  Old  Abe  never  came  to  see  us,  a  much 
more  incredible  thing  happened,  for  we  were  at  last 
taken  to  see  him. 

We  started  one  golden  summer's  day,  two  happy 
children  in  the  family  carriage,  with  my  father  and 
mother  and  an  older  sister  to  whom,  because  she 
was  just  home  from  boarding  school,  we  confidently 
appealed  whenever  we  needed  information.  We 
were  driven  northward  hour  after  hour,  past  har- 
vest fields  in  which  the  stubble  glinted  from  bronze 
to  gold  and  the  heavy-headed  grain  rested  luxuri- 
ously in  rounded  shocks,  until  we  reached  that 
beautiful  region  of  hills  and  lakes  which  surrounds 
the  capital  city  of  Wisconsin. 

But  although  Old  Abe,  sitting  sedately  upon  his 
high  perch,  was  sufficiently  like  an  uplifted  ensign 
to  remind  us  of  a  Roman  eagle,  and  although  his 
veteran  keeper,  clad  in  an  old  army  coat,  was 
ready  to  answer  all  our  questions  and  to  tell  us 
of  the  thirty-six  battles  and  skirmishes  through 
which  Old  Abe  had  passed  unscathed,  the  crowning 
moment  of  the  impressive  journey  came  to  me  later, 
illustrating  once  more  that  children  are  as  quick  to 
catch  the  meaning  of  a  symbol  as  they  are  unac- 
countably slow  to  understand  the  real  world  about 
them. 

The  entire  journey  to  the  veteran  war  eagle  had 
itself  symbolized  that  search  for  the  heroic  and 
perfect  which  so  persistently  haunts  the  young  ;  and 
as  I  stood  under  the  great  white  dome  of  Old  Abe's 


INFLUENCE   OF   LINCOLN  29 

stately  home,  for  one  brief  moment  the  search  was 
rewarded.  I  dimly  caught  a  hint  of  what  men  have 
tried  to  say  in  their  world-old  effort  to  imprison 
a  space  in  so  divine  a  line  that  it  shall  hold  only 
yearning  devotion  and  high-hearted  hopes.  Cer- 
tainly the  utmost  rim  of  my  first  dome  was  filled 
with  the  tumultuous  impression  of  soldiers  march- 
ing to  death  for  freedom's  sake,  of  pioneers  stream- 
ing westward  to  establish  self-government  in  yet 
another  sovereign  state.  Only  the  great  dome  of 
St.  Peter's  itself  has  ever  clutched  my  heart  as  did 
that  modest  curve  which  had  sequestered  from 
infinitude  in  a  place  small  enough  for  my  child's 
mind,  the  courage  and  endurance  which  I  could 
not  comprehend  so  long  as  it  was  lost  in  "the  void 
of  unresponsive  space"  under  the  vaulting  sky 
itself.  But  through  all  my  vivid  sensations  there 
persisted  the  image  of  the  eagle  in  the  corridor  be- 
low and  Lincoln  himself  as  an  epitome  of  all  that 
was  great  and  good.  I  dimly  caught  the  notion  of 
the  martyred  President  as  the  standard  bearer  to 
the  conscience  of  his  countrymen,  as  the  eagle  had 
been  the  ensign  of  courage  to  the  soldiers  of  the 
Wisconsin  regiment. 

Thirty-five  years  later,  as  - 1  stood  on  the  hill 
campus  of  the  University  of  Wisconsin  with  a 
commanding  view  of  the  capitol  building  a  mile 
directly  across  the  city,  I  saw  again  the  dome  which 
had  so  uplifted  my  childish  spirit.  The  Univer- 
sity, which  was  celebrating  its  fiftieth  anniversary. 


30    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

had  honored  me  with  a  doctor's  degree,  and  In  the 
midst  of  the  academic  pomp  and  the  rejoicing,  the 
dome  again  appeared  to  me  as  a  fitting  symbol  of 
a  state's  aspiration  even  in  its  high  mission  of 
universal  education. 

Thousands  of  children  In  the  sixties  and  seventies, 

^In  the  simplicity  which  is  given  to  the  understand- 
ing of  a  child,  caught  a  notion  of  imperishable 
heroism  when  they  were  told  that  brave  men  had 
lost  their  lives  that  the  slaves  might  be  free.     At 

^'  any  moment  the  conversation  of  our  elders  might 
turn  upon  these  heroic  events  ;  there  were  red- 
letter  days,  when  a  certain  general  came  to  see  my 
father,  and  again  when  Governor  Oglesby,  whom 
all  Illinois  children  called  ''Uncle  Dick,"  spent  a 
Sunday  under  the  pine  trees  in  our  front  yard. 
We  felt  on  those  days  a  connection  with  the  great 
world  so  much  more  heroic  than  the  village  world 
which  surrounded  us  through  all  the  other  days. 

^  My  father  was  a  member  of  the  state  senate  for 
the  sixteen  years  between  1854  and  1870,  and  even 
as  a  little  child  I  was  dimly  conscious  of  the  grave 
march  of  public  affairs  In  his  comings  and  goings 

V^  at  the  state  capital. 

He  was  much  too  occupied  to  allow  time  for 
reminiscence,  but  I  remember  overhearing  a  con- 
versation between  a  visitor  and  himself  concerning 
the  stirring  days  before  the  war,  when  It  was  by 
no  means  certain  that  the  Union  men  In  the  legis- 
lature would  always  have  enough  votes  to  keep  Illi- 


INFLUENCE   OF   LINCOLN  31 

nois  from  seceding.  I  heard  with  breathless  in- 
terest my  father's  account  of  the  trip  a  majority 
of  the  legislators  had  made  one  dark  day  to  St. 
Louis,  that  there  might  not  be  enough  men  for  a 
•^nqtrorum^'  and  so  no  vote  could  be  taken  on  the 
momentous  question  until  the  Union  men  could 
rally  their  forces. 

My  father  always  spoke  of  the  martyred  Presi- 
dent as  Mr.  Lincoln,  and  I  never  heard  the  great 
name  without  a  thrill.  I  remember  the  day  —  it 
must  have  been  one  of  comparative  leisure,  per- 
haps a  Sunday  —  when  at  my  request  my  father 
took  out  of  his  desk  a  thin  packet  marked  ''Mr. 
Lincoln's  Letters,"  the  shortest  one  of  which  bore 
unmistakable  traces  of  that  remarkable  personal- 
ity. These  letters  began,  "My  dear  Double- 
D'ed  Addams,"  and  to  the  inquiry  as  to  how  the 
person  thus  addressed  was  about  to  vote  on  a  cer- 
tain measure  then  before  the  legislature,  was  added 
the  assurance  that  he  knew  that  this  Addams 
''would  vote  according  to  his  conscience,"  but  he 
begged  to  know  in  which  direction  the  same  con- 
science "was  pointing."  As  my  father  folded  up 
the  bits  of  paper  I  fairly  held  my  breath  in  my  desire 
that  he  should  go  on  with  the  reminiscence  of  this 
wonderful  man,  whom  he  had  known  in  his  compara- 
tive obscurity,  or  better  still,  that  he  should  be 
moved  to  tell  some  of  the  exciting  incidents  of  the 
Lincoln-Douglas  debates.  There  were  at  least 
two  pictures  of  Lincoln  that  always  hung  in  my 


32     TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

father's  room,  and  one  In  our  old-fashioned  up- 
stairs parlor,  of  Lincoln  with  little  Tad.  For  one 
or  all  of  these  reasons  I  always  tend  to  associate 
Lincoln  with  the  tenderest  thoughts  of  my  father. 

I  recall  a  time  of  great  perplexity  In  the  summer  of 
1894,  when  Chicago  was  filled  with  federal  troops 
sent  there  by  the  President  of  the  United  States, 
and  their  presence  was  resented  by  the  governor 
of  the  state,  that  I  walked  the  wearisome  way 
from  Hull-House  to  Lincoln  Park  —  for  no  cars 
were  running  regularly  at  that  moment  of  sym- 
pathetic strikes  —  In  order  to  look  at  and  gain 
magnanimous  counsel.  If  I  might,  from  the  mar- 
velous St.  Gaudens  statue  which  had  been  but 
recently  placed  at  the  entrance  of  the  park.  Some 
of  Lincoln's  Immortal  words  were  cut  Into  the  stone 
at  his  feet,  and  never  did  a  distracted  town  more 
sorely  need  the  healing  of  ''with  charity  towards 
all"  than  did  Chicago  at  that  moment,  and  the 
tolerance  of  the  man  who  had  won  charity  for 
those  on  both  sides  of  "an  irrepressible  conflict." 

Of  the  many  things  written  of  my  father  In  that 
sad  August  In  1881,  when  he  died,  the  one  I  cared 
for  most  was  written  by  an  old  political  friend  of 
his  who  was  then  editor  of  a  great  Chicago  daily. 
He  wrote  that  while  there  were  doubtless  many 
members  of  the  Illinois  legislature  who  during  the 
great  contracts  of  the  war  time  and  the  demoraliz- 
ing reconstruction  days  that  followed,  had  never 
accepted    a    bribe,    he   wished    to   bear   testimony 


INFLUENCE   OF   LINCOLN  33 

that  he  personally  had  known  but  this  one  man  who  j 
had  never  been  offered  a  bribe  because  bad  men  I 
were  instinctively  afraid^jofhim.  / 

I  feel  now  the  hot  chagrin) with  which  I  recalled 
this   statement  during  those  early   efforts  of  Illi- 
nois   in  which  Hull-House   joined,   to  secure  the 
passage  of  the  first  factory  legislation.     I  was  told 
by  the  representatives  of  an  informal  association  of 
manufacturers  that  if  the  residents  of  Hull-House 
would  drop  this  nonsense  about  a  sweat  shop  bill, 
of  which  they  knew  nothing,  certain  business  men 
would  agree  to  give  fifty  thousand  dollars  w^ithin 
two  years  to  be  used  for  any  of  the  philanthropic 
activities   of  the   Settlement.     As  the  fact  broke     ^ 
upon  me  that  I  was  being  offered  a  bribe,  the  shame 
was  enormously  increased  by  the  memory  of  this 
statement.     What   had   befallen   the   daughter  of 
my  father  that  such  a  thing  could  happen  to  her  ^     , 
The  salutary  reflection  that  it  could  not  have  oc-    / 
curred  unless  a  weakness  in  myself  had  permitted  / 
it,  withheld  me  at  least  from  an  heroic  display  of  c^ 
indignation  before  the  two  men  making  the  offer, 
and  I  explained  as  gently  as  I  could  that  we  had  no    / 
ambition  to  make  Hull-House  ''the  largest  insti- 
tution on  the  West  Side,"  but  that  we  were  much 
concerned  that  our  neighbors  should  be  protected 
from  untoward  conditions  of  work,  and  —  so  much 
heroics,  youth  must  permit  itself  —  if  to  accom- 
plish this  the  destruction  of  Hull-House  was  neces- 
sary, that  we  would  cheerfully  sing  a  Te  Deum  on 


34    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

its  ruins.  The  good  friend  who  had  invited  me  to 
lunch  at  the  Union  League  Club  to  meet  two  of  his 
friends  who  wanted  to  talk  over  the  sweat  shop  bill 
here  kindly  intervened,  and  we  all  hastened  to 
cover  over  the  awkward  situation  by  that  scurry- 
ing away  from  ugly  morality  which  seems  to  be  an 
obligation  of  social  intercourse. 

Of  the  many  old  friends  of  my  father  who  kindly 
came  to  look  up  his  daughter  in  the  first  days  of 
Hull-House,  I  recall  none  with  more  pleasure  than 
Lyman  Trumbull,  whom  we  used  to  point  out  to 
the  members  of  the  Young  Citizens'  Club  as  the 
man  who  had  for  days  held  in  his  keeping  the 
Proclamation  of  Emancipation  until  his  friend 
President  Lincoln  was  ready  to  issue  it.  I  re- 
member the  talk  he  gave  at  Hull-House  on  one  of 
our  early  celebrations  of  Lincoln's  birthday,  his 
assertion  that  Lincoln  was  no  cheap  popular  hero, 
that  the  "common  people"  would  have  to  make  an 
effort  if  they  would  understand  his  greatness,  as 
Lincoln  painstakingly  made  a  long  effort  to  under- 
stand the  greatness  of  the  people.  There  was 
something  in  the  admiration  of  Lincoln's  contem- 
poraries, or  at  least  of  those  men  who  had  known 
him  personally,  which  was  quite  unlike  even  the 
best  of  the  devotion  and  reverent  understanding 
which  has  developed  since.  In  the  first  place, 
they  had  so  large  a  fund  of  common  experience; 
they  too  had  pioneered  in  a  western  country,  and 
had  urged  the  development  of  canals  and  railroads 


INFLUENCE   OF   LINCOLN  35 

in  order  that  the  raw  prairie  crops  might  be  trans- 
ported to  market;  they  too  had  reaHzed  that  if 
this  last  tremendous  experiment  in  self-govern- 
ment failed  here,  it  would  be  the  disappointment 
of  the  centuries  and  that  upon  their  ability  to 
organize  self-government  in  state,  county  and 
town  depended  the  verdict  of  history.  These  men 
also  knew,  as  Lincoln  himself  did,  that  if  this 
tremendous  experiment  was  to  come  to  fruition,  it 
must  be  brought  about  by  the  people  themselves ; 
that  there  was  no  other  capital  fund  upon  which 
to  draw.  I  remember  an  incident  occurring  when 
I  was  about  fifteen  years  old,  in  which  the  convic- 
tion was  driven  into  my  mind  that  the  people 
themselves  were  the  great  resource  of  the  country. 
My  father  had  made  a  little  address  of  reminiscence 
at  a  meeting  of  ''the  old  settlers  of  Stephenson 
County,"  which  was  held  every  summer  in  the  grove 
beside  the  mill,  relating  his  experiences  in  inducing 
the  farmers  of  the  county  to  subscribe  for  stock 
in  the  Northwestern  Railroad,  which  was  the  first 
to  penetrate  the  county  and  to  make  a  connection 
with  the  Great  Lakes  at  Chicago.  Many  of  the 
Pennsylvania  German  farmers  doubted  the  value 
of  ''the  whole  new-fangled  business,"  and  had  no 
use  for  any  railroad,  much  less  for  one  in  which  they 
were  asked  to  risk  their  hard-earned  savings.  My 
father  told  of  his  despair  in  one  farmers'  community 
dominated  by  such  prejudice  which  did  not  in  the 
least   give   way  under   his    argument,  but   finally 


36     TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

melted  under  the  enthusiasm  of  a  high-spirited 
German  matron  who  took  a  share  to  be  paid  for 
"out  of  butter  and  egg  money."  As  he  related  his 
admiration  of  her,  an  old  woman's  piping  voice 
in  the  audience  called  out:  "I'm  here  to-day,  Mr. 
Addams,  and  I'd  do  it  again  if  you  asked  me." 
The  old  woman,  bent  and  broken  by  her  seventy 
years  of  toilsome  life,  was  brought  to  the  platform 
and  I  was  much  impressed  by  my  father's  grave 
presentation  of  her  as  "one  of  the  public-spirited 
pioneers  to  whose  heroic  fortitude  we  are  indebted 
for  the  development  of  this  country."  I  remember 
that  I  was  at  that  time  reading  with  great  enthu- 
siasm Carlyle's  "Heroes  and  Hero  Worship,"  but 
"on  the  evening  of  ''Old  Settlers'  Day,"  to  my  sur- 
prise, I  found  it  difficult  to  go  on.  Its  sonorous 
sentences  and  exaltation  of  the  man  who  "can" 
suddenly  ceased  to  be  convincing.  I  had  already 
written  down  in  my  commonplace  book  a  resolu- 
tion to  give  at  least  twenty-five  copies  of  this  book 
each  year  to  noble  young  people  of  my  acquaint- 
ance. It  is  perhaps  fitting  to  record  in  this  chapter 
that  the  very  first  Christmas  we  spent  at  Hull- 
House,  in  spite  of  exigent  demands  upon  my  slender 
purse  for  candy  and  shoes,  I  gave  to  a  club  of  boys 
twenty-five  copies  of  the  then  new  Carl  Schurz's 
"Appreciation  of  Abraham  Lincoln." 

In  our  early  effort  at  Hull-House  to  hand  on  to 
our  neighbors  whatever  of  help  we  had  found  for 
ourselves,  we  made  much  of  Lincoln.     We  were 


INFLUENCE   OF   LINCOLN  37 

often  distressed  by  the  children  of  immigrant  par- 
ents who  were  ashamed  of  the  pit  whence  they 
were  digged,  who  repudiated  the  language  and 
customs  of  their  elders,  and  counted  themselves 
successful  as  they  were  able  to  ignore  the  past. 
Whenever  I  held  up  Lincoln  for  their  admiration 
as  the  greatest  American,  I  invariably  pointed  out 
his  marvelous  power  to  retain  and  utilize  past 
experiences  ;  that  he  never  forgot  how  the  plam 
people  in  Sangamon  County  thought  and  felt  when 
he  himself  had  moved  to  town  ;  that  this  habit  was 
the  foundation  for  his  marvelous  capacity  for 
growth;  that  during  those  distracting  years  in 
Washington  it  enabled  him  to  make  clear  beyond 
denial  to  the  American  people  themselves,  the 
goal  towards  which  they  were  moving.  I^  was 
sometimes  bold  enough  to  add  that  proficiency 
in  the  art  of  recognition  and  comprehension  did  - 
not  come  without  eflPort,  and  that  certainly  its 
attainment  was  necessary  for  any  successful  career 
in  our  conglomerate  America. 

An  instance  of  the  invigorating  and  clarifying 
power  of  Lincoln's  influence  came  to  me  many  ^ 
years  ago  in  England.  I  had  spent  two  days  in 
Oxford  under  the  guidance  of  Arnold  Toynbee's 
old  friend  Sidney  Ball  of  St.  John's  College,  who 
was  closely  associated  with  that  group  of  scholars 
we  all  identify  with  the  beginnings  of  the  Settle- 
ment movement.  It  was  easy  to  claim  the  phi- 
losophy of  Thomas  Hill  Green,  the  road-building 


38     TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

episode  of  Ruskin,  the  experimental  living  in  the 
east  end  by  Frederick  Maurice,  the  London  Work- 
ingmen's  College  of  Edward  Dennison,  as  founda- 
.  tions  laid  by  university  men  for  the  establishment 
of  Toynbee  Hall.  I  was  naturally  much  interested 
in  the  beginnings  of  a  movement  whose  slogan  was 
"Back  to  the  People,"  and  which  could  doubtless 
claim  the  Settlement  as  one  of  its  manifestations. 

I  /  Nevertheless  the  processes  by  which  so  simple  a 
conclusion  as  residence  among  the  poor  in  East 
London  was  reached,  seemed  to  me  very  involved  and 
roundabout.     However  inevitable  these  processes 

might  be  for  class-conscious  Englishmen,  they  could 

not  but  seem  artificial  to  a  western  American  who 
had  been  born  In  a  rural  community  where  the 
early  pioneer  life  had  made  social  distinctions  im- 
possible. Always  on  the  alert  lest  American 
Settlements  should  become  mere  echoes  and  imita- 
tions of  the  English  movement,  I  found  myself 
assenting  to  what  was  shown  me  only  with  that 
part  of  my  consciousness  which  had  been  formed 
by  reading  of  English  social  movements,  while 
at  the  same  time  the  rustic  American  inside  looked 
on  in  detached  comment. 

Why  should  an  American  be  lost  in  admiration 
of  a  group  of  Oxford  students  because  they  went 
out  to  mend  a  disused  road,  inspired  thereto  by 
Raskin's  teaching  for  the  bettering  of  the  common 
life,  when  all  the  country  roads  in  America  were 
mended    each    spring    by    self-respecting    citizens, 


INFLUENCE   OF   LINCOLN  39 

who  were  thus   carrying  out  the   simple   method     j 
devised  by  a  democratic  government  for  providing-  J 
highways.      No  humor  penetrated   my  high  mood 
even  as  I  somewhat  uneasily  recalled  certain  spring 
thaws  when  I  had  been  mired  in  roads  provided 
by  the  American  citizen.     I  continued  to  fumble 
for  a  synthesis  which  I  was  unable  to  make  until  I 
developed    that    uncomfortable    sense    of    playing 
two  roles  at  once.     It  was  therefore  almost  with  a 
dual  consciousness  that  I  was  ushered,  during  the 
last  afternoon  of  mv  Oxford  stay,  into  the  drawmg- 
room  of  the  Master  of  Baliol.     Edward   Caird's 
"Evolution  of  Religion,"  which  I  had  read  but  a 
year  or  two  before,  had  been  of  unspeakable  com- 
fort to   me   in   the   labyrinth   of   differing   ethical 
teachings    and    religious    creeds    which   the    many 
immigrant  colonies  of  our  neighborhood  presented. 
I  remember  that  I  wanted  very  much  to  ask  the 
author  himself,  how  far  it  was  reasonable  to  expect 
the  same  quality  of  virtue  and  a  similar  standard 
of  conduct  from  these  divers  people.     I  was  tim- 
idly trying  to  apply  his  method  of  study  to  those 
groups  of  homesick  immigrants  huddled  together 
in  strange  tenement  houses,  among  whom  I  seemed 
to  detect  the  beginnings  of  a  secular  religion  or  at 
least  of  a  wide  humanitarianism  evolved  out  of  the 
various  exigencies  of  the  situation ;   somewhat  as  a 
household  of  children,  whose  mother  is  dead,  out 
of  their   sudden   necessity  perform  unaccustomed 
offices   for   each   other   and    awkwardly   exchange 


40    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

consolations,  as  children  in  happier  households 
never  dream  of  doing.  Perhaps  Mr.  Caird  could 
tell  me  whether  there  was  any  religious  content  in 
this 

Faith  to  each  other;  this  fidelity 

Of  fellow  wanderers  in  a  desert  place. 

But  when  tea  was  over  and  my  opportunity 
came  for  a  talk  with  my  host,  I  suddenly  remem- 
bered, to  the  exclusion  of  all  other  associations, 
only  Mr.  Caird's  fine  analysis  of  Abraham  Lincoln, 
delivered  in  a  lecture  two  years  before. 
,  The  memory  of  Lincoln,  the  mention  of  his  name, 
came  like  a  refreshing  breeze  from  off  the  prairie, 
blowing  aside  all  the  scholarly  implications  in 
which  I  had  become  so  reluctantly  involved,  and 
as  the  philosopher  spoke  of  the  great  American 
'Svho  w^as  content  merely  to  dig  the  channels 
through  which  the  moral  life  of  his  countrymen 
might  flow,"  I  was  gradually  able  to  make  a  natural 
connection  between  this  intellectual  penetration  at 
Oxford  and  the  moral  perception  which  is  always 
necessary  for  the  discovery  of  new  methods  by 
which  to  minister  to  human  needs.  In  the  un- 
■  ceasing  ebb  and  flow  of  justice  and  oppression  we 
must  all  dig  channels  as  best  w^e  may,  that  at  the 
propitious  moment  somewhat  of  the  swelling  tide 
may  be  conducted  to  the  barren  places  of  life. 

Gradually  a  healing  sense  of  well-being  enveloped 
me   and  a  quick  remorse  for  my  blindness,   as   I 


INFLUENCE   OF   LINCOLN  41 

realized  that  no  one  among  his  own  countrymen 
had  been  able  to  interpret  Lincoln's  greatness  more 
nobly  than  this  Oxford  scholar  had  done,  and  that 
vision  and  wisdom  as  well  as  high  motives  must 
lie  behind  every  effective  stroke  in  the  continuous 
labor  for  human  equality ;  I  remembered  that 
another  Master  of  Baliol,  Jowett  himself,  had  said 
that  it  was  fortunate  for  society  that  every  age 
possessed  at  least  a  few  minds  which,  like  Arnold 
Toynbee's,  were  '^perpetually  disturbed  over  the 
apparent  inequalities  of  mankind."  Certainly 
both  the  English  and  American  settlements  could 
unite  in  confessing  to  that  disturbance  of  mind. 

Traces  of  this  Oxford  visit  are  curiously  reflected 
in  a  paper  I  wrote  soon  after  my  return  at  the  re- 
quest of  the  American  Academy  of  Political  and 
Social  Science.     It  begins  as  follows  :  — 

The  word  "settlement,"  which  we  have  borrowed 
from  London,  is  apt  to  grate  a  little  upon  American 
ears.  It  is  not,  after  all,  so  long  ago  that  Americans 
who  settled  were  those  who  had  adventured  into  a  new 
country,  where  they  were  pioneers  in  the  midst  of  diffi- 
cult surroundings.  The  word  still  implies  migrating 
from  one  condition  of  life  to  another  totally  unlike  it, 
and  against  this  implication  the  resident  of  an  Ameri- 
can settlement  takes  alarm. 

We  do  not  like  to  acknowledge  that  Americans  are 
divided  into  tv/o  nations,  as  her  prime  minister  once 
admitted  of  England.  We  are  not  willing,  openly  and 
professedly,  to  assume  that  American  citizens  are  broken 


42    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

up  into  classes,  even  if  we  make  that  assumption  the 
preface  to  a  plea  that  the  superior  class  has  duties  to 
the  inferior.  Our  democracy  is  still  our  most  precious 
possession,  and  we  do  well  to  resent  any  inroads  upon 
it,  even  though  they  may  be  made  in  the  name  of  phi- 
lanthropy. 


Is  it  not  Abraham  Lincoln  who  has  cleared  the 
title  to  our  democracy  1  He  made  plain,  once  for 
all,  that  democratic  government,  associated  as  it  is 
with  all  the  mistakes  and  shortcomings  of  the  com- 
mon people,  still  remains  the  most  valuable  contri- 
bution America  has  made  to  the  moral  life  of  the 
world. 


CHAPTER   III 

Boarding-school  Ideals 

As  my  three  older  sisters  had  already  attended 
the  seminary  at  Rockford,  of  which  my  father  was 
trustee,  without  any  question  I  entered  there  at 
seventeen,  with  such  meager  preparation  in  Latin 
and  algebra  as  the  village  school  had  afforded.  I 
was  very  ambitious  to  go  to  Smith  College,  al- 
though I  well  knew  that  my  father's  theory  in 
regard  to  the  education  of  his  daughters  implied 
a  school  as  near  at  home  as  possible,  to  be  fol- 
lowed by  travel  abroad  in  lieu  of  the  wider  advan- 
tages which  an  eastern  college  is  supposed  to  afford. 
I  was  much  impressed  by  the  recent  return  of  my 
sister  from  a  year  in  Europe,  yet  I  was  greatly  disap- 
pointed at  the  moment  of  starting  to  humdrum 
Rockford.  After  the  first  weeks  of  homesickness 
were  over,  however,  I  became  very  much  absorbed 
in  the  little  world  which  the  boarding  school  in 
any  form  always  offers  to  Its  students. 

The  school  at  Rockford  In  1877  had  not  changed 
its  name  from  seminary  to  college,  although  it 
numbered,  on  its  faculty  and  among  Its  alumnae, 
college   women    who   were    most    eager   that   this 

43 


44    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

should  be  done,  and  who  really  accomplished  it 
during  the  next  five  years.  The  school  was  one  of 
the  earliest  efforts  for  women's  higher  education 
in  the  Mississippi  Valley,  and  from  the  beginning 
was  called  "The  Mount  Holyoke  of  the  West." 
It  reflected  much  of  the  missionary  spirit  of  that 
pioneer    institution,  and    the    proportion   of    mis- 


■   "' -o^'^       :  ^'^■^■.■■.^r-.    ■■■■■     ■  .^-i- 


'■  ). 


sionaries  among  its  early  graduates  was  almost  as 
large  as  Mount  Holyoke's  own.  In  addition  there 
had  been  thrown  about  the  founders  of  the  early 
western  school  the  glamour  of  frontier  privationSj^' 
and  the  first  students,  conscious  of  the  heroic 
self-sacrifice  made  in  their  behalf,  felt  that  each 
minute  of  the  time  thus  dearly  bought  must  be 
conscientiously  used.  This  inevitably  fostered  an 
atmosphere  of  intensity,  a  fever  of  preparation 
which  continued  long  after  the  direct  making  of  it 


BOARDING-SCHOOL   IDEALS  45 

had  ceased,  and  which  the  later  girls  accepted,  as 
they  did  the  campus  and  the  buildings,  without 
knowing  that  it  could  have  been  otherwise. 

There  was,  moreover,  always  present  in  the  school 
a  larger  or  smaller  group  of  girls  who  consciously 
accepted  this  heritage  and  persistently  endeavored 
to  fulfill  its  obligation.  We  worked  in  those  early 
years  as  if  we  really  believed  the  portentous  state- 
ment from  Aristotle  which  we  found  quoted  in 
BoswelPs  Johnson  and  with  which  we  illuminated 
the  wall  of  the  room  occupied  by  our  Chess  Club ; 
it  remained  there  for  months,  solely  out  of  rever- 
ence, let  us  hope,  for  the  two  ponderous  names 
associated  with  it ;  at  least  I  have  enough  confi- 
dence in  human  nature  to  assert  that  we  never 
really  believed  that  ''There  is  the  same  difference 
between  the  learned  and  the  unlearned  as  there  is 
between  the  living  and  the  dead."  We  were  also 
too  fond  of  quoting  Carlyle  to  the  effect,  "  'Tis  not 
to  taste  sweet  things,  but  to  do  noble  and  true 
things  that  the  poorest  son  of  Adam  dimly  longs." 

As  I  attempt  to  reconstruct  the  spirit  of  my  con- 
temporary group  by  looking  over  many  documents, 
I  find  nothing  more  amusing  than  a  plaint  regis- 
tered against  life's  Indistinctness,  which  I  imagine 
more  or  less  reflected  the  sentiments  of  all  of  us. 
At  any  rate  here  It  Is  for  the  entertainment  of  the 
reader  If  not  for  his  edification  :  ''So  much  of  our 
time  Is  spent  in  preparation,  so  much  In  routine, 
and  so  much  In  sleep,  we  find  it  difficult  to  have  any 


46    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

experience  at  all."  We  did  not,  however,  tamely 
accept  such  a  state  of  affairs,  for  we  made  various 
and  restless  attempts  to  break  through  this  dull 
obtuseness. 

At  one  time  five  of  us  tried  to  understand  De 
Quincey's  marvelous  ''Dreams"  more  sympatheti- 
cally, by  drugging  ourselves  with  opium.  We 
solemnly  consumed  small  white  powders  at  inter- 
vals during  an  entire  long  holiday,  but  no  mental 
reorientation  took  place,  and  the  suspense  and  ex- 
citement did  not  even  permit  us  to  grow  sleepy. 
About  four  o'clock  on  the  weird  afternoon,  the 
young  teacher  whom  we  had  been  obliged  to  take 
into  our  confidence,  grew  alarmed  over  the  whole 
performance,  took  away  our  De  Quincey  and  all 
the  remaining  powders,  administered  an  emetic  to 
each  of  the  five  aspirants  for  sympathetic  under- 
standing of  all  human  experience,  and  sent  us  to 
our  separate  rooms  with  a  stern  command  to  appear 
at  family  worship  after  supper  ''whether  we  were 
able  to  or  not." 

Whenever  we  had  chances  to  write,  we  took,  of 
course,  large  themes,  usually  from  the  Greek  be- 
cause they  were  the  most  stirring  to  the  imagina- 
tion. The  Greek  oration  I  gave  at  our  Junior 
Exhibition  was  written  with  infinite  pains  and  taken 
to  the  Greek  professor  in  Beloit  College  that  there 
might  be  no  mistakes,  even  after  the  Rockford 
College  teacher  and  the  most  scholarly  clergyman 
in  town  had  both  passed  upon  it.     The  oration 


BOARDING-SCHOOL   IDEALS  47 

upon  Bellerophon  and  his  successful  fight  with  the 
Minotaur,  contended  that  social  evils  could  only 
be  overcome  by  him  who  soared  above  them  into 
idealism,  as  Bellerophon  mounted  upon  the  winged 
horse  Pegasus,  had  slain  the  earthy  dragon. 

There  were  practically  no  Economics  taught  \'!\ 
women's  colleges  —  at  least  in  the  fresh-water 
ones  —  thirty  years  ago,  although  we  painstak- 
ingly studied  "Mental"  and  ''Moral"  Philosophy, 
which,  though  far  from  dry  in  the  classroom,  be- 
came the  subject  of  more  spirited  discussion  outside, 
and  gave  us  a  clew  for  animated  rummaging  in  the 
little  college  library.  Of  course  we  read  a  great 
deal  of  Ruskin  and  Browning,  and  liked  the  most 
abstruse  parts  the  best ;  but  like  the  famous  gentle- 
man who  talked  prose  without  knowing  it,  we  never 
dreamed  of  connecting  them  with  our  philosophy. 
My  genuine  interest  was  history,  partly  because  of 
a  superior  teacher,  and  partly  because  my  father 
had  always  Insisted  upon  a  certain  amount  of  his- 
toric reading  ever  since  he  had  paid  me,  as  a  little 
girl,  five  cents  a  "Life"  for  each  Plutarch  hero  I 
could  Intelligently  report  to  him,  and  twenty-five 
cents  for  every  volume  of  Irvlng's  "Life  of  Wash- 
ington." 

When  we  started  for  the  long  vacations,  a  little 
group  of  five  would  vow  that  during  the  summer  we 
would  read  all  of  Motley's  "Dutch  Republic"  or, 
more  ambitious  still,  all  of  Gibbon's  "Decline  and 
Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire."     When  we  returned 


48    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

at  the  opening  of  school  and  three  of  us  announced 
we  had  finished  the  latter,  each  became  skeptical 
of  the  other  two.  We  fell  upon  each  other  with 
a  sort  of  rough-and-tumble  examination,  in  which 
no  quarter  was  given  or  received  ;  but  the  suspicion 
was  finally  removed  that  any  one  had  skipped. 
We  took  for  a  class  motto  the  early  Saxon  word 
for  lady,  translated  into  breadgiver,  and  we  took 
for  our  class  color  the  poppy,  because  poppies  grew 
among  the  wheat,  as  if  Nature  knew  that  wherever 
there  was  hunger  that  needed  food  there  would  be 
pain  that  needed  relief.  We  must  have  found  the 
sentiment  in  a  book  somewhere,  but  we  used  it  so 
much  that  it  finally  seemed  like  an  idea  of  our  own, 
although  of  course  none  of  us  had  ever  seen  a  Euro- 
pean field,  the  only  page  upon  which  Nature  has 
written  this  particular  message. 

That  this  group  of  ardent  girls  who  discussed 
everything  under  the  sun  with  such  unabated 
interest,  did  not  take  it  all  out  in  talk,  may  be 
demonstrated  by  the  fact  that  one  of  the  class  w^ho 
married  a  missionary  founded  a  very  successful 
school  in  Japan  for  the  children  of  the  English  and 
Americans  living  there ;  another  of  the  class 
became  a  medical  missionary  to  Korea,  and  because 
of  her  successful  treatment  of  the  Queen,  was  made 
court  physician  at  a  time  when  the  opening  was 
considered  of  importance  in  the  diplomatic  as  well 
as  in  the  missionary  world  ;  still  another  became  an 
unusually  skilled  teacher  of  the  blind ;   and  one  of 


BOARDING-SCHOOL   IDEALS  49 

them   a   pioneer  librarian  in  that  early  effort  to 
bring  ''books  to  the  people." 

[^  Perhaps  this  early  companionship  showed  me 
how  essentially  similar  are  the  various  forms  of 
social  effort,  and  curiously  enough,  the  actual 
activities  of  a  missionary  school  are  not  unlike 
many  that  are  carried  on  in  a  Settlement  situated 
in  a  foreign  quarter.  Certainly  the  most  sym- 
pathetic and  comprehending  visitors  we  have  ever 
had  at  Hull-House  have  been  returned  mission- 
aries ;  among  them  two  elderly  ladies,  who  had 
lived  for  years  in  India  and  who  had  been  homesick 
and  bewildered  since  their  return,  declared  that  the 
fortnight  at  Hull-House  had  been  the  happiest  and 
most  familiar  they  had  had  in  America.  ^ 

Of  course  in  such  an  atmosphere  a  girl  like  myself, 
of  serious  not  to  say  priggish  tendency,  did  not 
escape  a  concerted  pressure  to  push  her  into  the 
''missionary  field."  During  the  four  years  it  was 
inevitable  that  every  sort  of  evangelical  appeal 
should  have  been  made  to  reach  the  comparatively 
few  "unconverted"  girls  in  the  school.  We  were 
the  subject  of  prayer  at  the  daily  chapel  exercise 
and  the  weekly  prayer  meeting,  attendance  upon 
which  was  obligatory. 

I  was  singularly  unresponsive  to  all  these  forms  of 
emotional  appeal,  although  I  became  unspeakably 
embarrassed  when  they  were  presented  to  me  at 
close  range  by  a  teacher  during  the  "silent  hour," 
which  we  were  all  required  to  observe  every  even- 


so    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

Ing  and  which  was  never  broken  Into,  even  by  a 
member  of  the  faculty,  unless  the  errand  was  one 
of  grave  Import.  I  found  these  occasional  Inter- 
views on  the  part  of  one  of  the  more  serious  young 
teachers,  of  whom  I  was  extremely  fond,  hard  to 
endure,  as  was  a  long  series  of  conversations  In  my 
senior  year  conducted  by  one  of  the  most  enthu- 
siastic members  of  the  faculty.  In  which  the  desira- 
bility of  Turkey  as  a  field  for  missionary  labor  was 
enticingly  put  before  me.  I  suppose  I  held  myself 
aloof  from  all  these  Influences,  partly  owing  to  the 
fact  that  my  father  was  not  a  communicant  of  any 
church,  and  I  tremendously  admired  his  scrupulous 
morality  and  sense  of  honor  In  all  matters  of  per- 
sonal and  public  conduct,  and  also  because  the  little 
group  to  which  I  have  referred  was  much  given  to  a 
sort  of  rationalism,  doubtless  founded  upon  an  early 
reading  of  Etfiersbn.  In  this  connection,  when 
Bronson  Alcott  came  to  lecture  at  the  school,  we 
^all  vied  with  each  other  for  a  chance  to  do  him  a 
personal  service  because  he  had  been  a  friend  of 
Emerson,  and  we  were  Inexpressibly  scornful  of 
our  younger  fellow-students  who  cared  for  him 
merely  on  the  basis  of  his  grandfatherly  relation  to 
*^  Little  Women."  I  recall  cleaning  the  clay  of  the 
unpaved  streets  off  his  heavy  cloth  overshoes  In  a 
state  of  ecstatic  energy. 

But  I  think  In  my  case  there  were  other  factors 
as  well  that  contributed  to  my  unresponsiveness  to 
the  evangelical  appeal.     A  curious  course  of  read- 


BOARDING-SCHOOL   IDEALS  51 

ing  I  had  marked  out  for  myself  In  medieval 
history,  seems  to  have  left  me  fascinated  by  an 
Ideal  of  mingled  learning,  piety  and  physical  labor, 
more  nearly  exemplified  by  the  Port  Royalists 
than  by  any  others. 

The  only  moments  In  which  I  seem  to  have  ap- 
proximated In  my  own  experience  to  a  faint  realiza- 
tion of  the  '' beauty  of  holiness,"  as  I  conceived  it, 
was  each  Sunday  morning  between  the  hours  of 
nine  and  ten,  when  I  went  into  the  exquisitely  neat 
room  of  the  teacher  of  Greek  and  read  with  her 
from  a  Greek  testament.  We  did  this  every 
Sunday  morning  for  two  years.  It  was  not  exactly 
a  lesson,  for  I  never  prepared  for  It,  and  while  I 
was  held  within  reasonable  bounds  of  syntax,  I 
was  allowed  much  more  freedom  In  translation 
than  was  permitted  the  next  morning  when  I 
read  Homer ;  neither  did  we  discuss  doctrines,  for 
although  It  was  with  this  same  teacher  that  in  our 
junior  year  we  studied  Paul's  Epistle  to  the 
Hebrews,  committing  all  of  it  to  memory  and 
analyzing  and  reducing  it  to  doctrines  within  an 
inch  of  our  lives,  we  never  allowed  an  echo  of  this 
exercise  to  appear  at  these  blessed  Sunday  morning 
readings.  It  was  as  if  the  disputatious  Paul  had 
not  yet  been,  for  we  always  read  from  the  Gospels. 
The  regime  of  Rockford  Seminary  was  still  very 
simple  In  the  70's.  Each  student  made  her  own 
fire  and  kept  her  own  room  In  order.  Sunday 
morning  was  a  great  clearing  up  day,  and  the  sense 


52    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

of  having  made  immaculate  my  own  immediate 
surroundings,  the  consciousness  of  clean  linen, 
said  to  be  close  to  the  consciousness  of  a  clean 
conscience,  always  mingles  in  my  mind  with  these 
early  readings.  I  certainly  bore  away  with  me  a 
lifelong  enthusiasm  for  reading  the  Gospels  in 
bulk,  a  whole  one  at  a  time,  and  an  insurmountable 
distaste  for  having  them  cut  up  into  chapter  and 
verse,  or  for  hearing  the  incidents  in  thatwonderful 
Life  thus  referred  to  as  if  it  were  merely  a  record. 

My  copy  of  the  Greek  testament  had  been  pre- 
sented to  me  by  the  brother  of  our  Greek  teacher, 
Professor  Blaisdell  of  Beloit  College,  a  true 
scholar  in  ^'Christian  Ethics,"  as  his  department 
was  called.  I  recall  that  one  day  in  the  summer 
after  I  left  college  —  one  of  the  black  days  which 
followed  the  death  of  my  father  —  this  kindly 
scholar  came  to  see  me  in  order  to  bring  such  com- 
fort as  he  might  and  to  inquire  how  far.I  had  found 
solace  in  the  little  book  he  had  given  me  so  long 
before.  When  I  suddenly  recall  the  village  in 
which  I  was  born,  its  steeples  and  roofs  look  as  they 
did  that  day  from  the  hilltop  where  we  talked 
together,  the  familiar  details  smoothed  out  and 
merging,  as  it  were,  into  that  wide  conception  of  the 
universe,  which  for  the  moment  swallowed  up  my 
personal  grief  or  at  least  assuaged  it  with  a  realiza- 
tion that  it  was  but  a  drop  in  that  "torrent  of 
sorrow  and  anguish  and  terror  which  flows  under 
all   the   footsteps    of   man."     This    realization   of 


BOARDING-SCHOOL   IDEALS  53 

sorrow  as  the  common  lot,  of  death  as  the  universal 
experience,  was  the  first  comfort  which  my  bruised 
spirit  had  received.  In  reply  to  my  impatience 
with  the  Christian  doctrine  of  "resignation," 
that  it  implied  that  you  thought  of  your  sorrow 
only  in  its  efifect  upon  you  and  were  disloyal  to 
the  affection  itself,  I  remember  how  quietly  the 
Christian  scholar  changed  his  phraseology,  saying 
that  sometimes  consolation  came  to  us  better  in 
the  words  of  Plato,  and,  as  nearly  as  I  can  remember, 
that  was  the  first  time  I  had  ever  heard  Plato's 
sonorous  argument  for  the  permanence  of  the  ex- 
cellent. 

When  Professor  Blaisdell  returned  to  his  college, 
he  left  in  my  hands  a  small  copy  of  "The  Crito." 
The  Greek  was  too  hard  for  me,  and  I  was  speedily 
driven  to  Jowett's  translation.  That  old-fash- 
ioned habit  of  presenting  favorite  books  to  eager 
young  people,  although  it  degenerated  into  the 
absurdity  of  "friendship's  oflFerlngs,"  had  much  to 
be"  said  for  it,  when  It  Indicated  the  wellsprlngs 
of  literature  from  which  the  donor  himself  had 
drawn  waters  of  healing  and  inspiration. 

Throughout  our  school  years  we  were  always 
keenly  conscious  of  the  growing  development  of 
Rockford  Seminary  Into  a  college.  The  oppor- 
tunity for  our  Alma  Mater  to  take  her  place  In  the 
new  movement  of  full  college  education  for  women 
filled  us  with  enthusiasm,  and  It  became  a  driving 
ambition  with  the  undergraduates  to  share  in  this 


54    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

new  and  glorious  undertaking.  We  gravely  de- 
cided that  It  was  Important  that  some  of  the  stu- 
dents should  be  ready  to  receive  the  bachelor's 
degree  the  very  first  moment  that  the  charter  of 
the  school  should  secure  the  right  to  confer  It. 
Two  of  us,  therefore,  took  a  course  In  mathematics, 
advanced  beyond  anything  previously  given  In  the 
school,  from  one  of  those  early  young  women  work- 
ing for  a  Ph.D.,  who  was  temporarily  teaching  In 
Rockford  that  she  might  study  more  mathematics 
In  Leipslc. 

My  companion  In  all  these  arduous  labors  has 
since  accomplished  more  than  any  of  us  In  the 
effort  to  procure  the  franchise  for  women,  for  even 
then  we  all  took  for  granted  the  righteousness  of 
that  cause  into  which  I  at  least  had  merely  followed 
my  father's  conviction.  In  the  old-fashioned 
spirit  of  that  cause  I  might  cite  the  career  of 
this  companion  as  an  Illustration  of  the  efficacy 
of  higher  mathematics  for  women,  for  she  pos- 
sesses singular  ability  to  convince  even  the  densest 
legislators  of  their  legal  right  to  define  their 
own  electorate,  even  when  they  quote  against 
her  the  dustiest  of  state  constitutions  or  city 
charters. 

In  line  with  this  policy  of  placing  a  woman's 
college  on  an  equality  with  the  other  colleges  of 
the  state,  we  applied  for  an  opportunity  to  compete 
In  the  Intercollegiate  oratorical  contest  of  Illinois, 
and  we  succeeded  in  having  Rockford  admitted  as 


BOARDING-SCHOOL   IDEALS  55 

the  first  woman's  college.  When  I  was  finally 
selected  as  the  orator,  I  was  somewhat  dismayed 
to  find  that,  representing  not  only  one  school  but 
coHege  women  in  general,  I  could  not  resent  the 
brutal  frankness  with  which  my  oratorical  possi- 
bilities were  discussed  by  the  enthusiastic  group 
who  would  allow  no  personal  feeling  to  stand 
in  the  way  of  progress,  especially  the  progress 
of  Woman's  Cause.  I  was  told  among  other 
things  that  I  had  an  intolerable  habit  of  drop- 
ping my  voice  at  the  end  of  a  sentence  in  the 
most  feminine,  apologetic  and  even  deprecatory 
manner  which  would  probably  lose  Woman  the 
first  place. 

Woman  certainly  did  lose  the  first  place  and 
stood  fifth,  exactly  in  the  dreary  middle,  but  the 
ignominious  position  may  not  have  been  solely 
due  to  bad  mannerisms,  for  a  prior  place  was 
easily  accorded  to  William  Jennings  Bryan,  who 
not  only  thrilled  his  auditors  with  an  almost  pro- 
phetic anticipation  of  the  cross  of  gold,  but  with 
a  moral  earnestness  which  we  had  mistakenly 
assumed  would  be  the  unique  possession  of  the 
feminine  orator. 

I  so  heartily  concurred  with  the  decision  of  the 
judges  of  the  contest  that  It  was  with  a  care-free 
mind  that  I  induced  my  colleague  and  alternate  to 
remain  long  enough  in  "The  Athens  of  Illinois," 
In  which  the  successful  college  was  situated,  to  visit 
the  state  institutions,  one  for  the  Blind  and  one  for 


S6  TWENTY  YEARS   AT   HULL-HOUSE 

the  Deaf  and  Dumb.  Doctor  Gillette  was  at  that 
time  head  of  the  latter  institution ;  his  scholarly- 
explanation  of  the  method  of  teaching,  his  concern 
for  his  charges,  this  sudden  demonstration  of  the 
care  the  state  bestowed  upon  its  most  unfortunate 
children,  filled  me  with  grave  speculations  in  which 
the  first,  the  fifth,  or  the  ninth  place  in  an  oratorical 
contest  seemed  of  little  moment. 

However,  this  brief  delay  between  our  field  of 
Waterloo  and  our  arrival  at  our  aspiring  college 
turned  out  to  be  most  unfortunate,  for  we  found  the 
ardent  group  not  only  exhausted  by  the  premature 
preparations  for  the  return  of  a  successful  orator, 
but  naturally  much  irritated  as  they  contemplated 
their  garlands  drooping  disconsolately  in  tubs  and 
bowls  of  water.  They  did  not  fail  to  make  me 
realize  that  I  had  dealt  the  cause  of  woman's 
advancement  a  staggering  blow,  and  all  my  explana- 
tions of  the  fifth  place  were  haughtily  considered 
insufficient  before  that  golden  Bar  of  Youth,  so 
absurdly  inflexible  ! 

To  return  to  my  last  year  at  school,  it  was  inevi- 
table that  the  pressure  toward  religious  profession 
should  increase  as  graduating  day  approached. 
So  curious,  however,  are  the  paths  of  moral  de- 
velopment that  several  times  during  subsequent 
experiences  have  I  felt  that  this  passive  resistance 
of  mine,  this  clinging  to  an  individual  conviction, 
was  the  best  moral  training  I  received  at  Rockford 
College.     During  the  first  decade  of  Hull-House, 


BOARDING-SCHOOL   IDEALS  57 

it  was  felt  by  propagandists  of  divers  social  theories 
that  the  new  Settlement  would  be  a  fine  coign  of 
vantage  from  which  to  propagate  social  faiths,  and 
that  a  mere  preliminary  step  would  be  the  con- 
version of  the  founders  ;  hence  I  have  been  reasoned 
w^ith  hours  at  a  time,  and  I  recall  at  least  three 
occasions  when  this  was  followed  by  actual  prayer. 
In  the  first  instance,  the  honest  exhorter  who  fell 
upon  his  knees  before  my  astonished  eyes,  was  an 
advocate  of  single  tax  upon  land  values.  He 
begged,  in  that  indirect  phraseology  which  is 
deemed  appropriate  for  prayer,  that  'Hhe  sister 
might  see  the  beneficent  results  it  would  bring  to 
the  poor  who  live  in  the  awful  congested  districts 
around  this  very  house." 

The  early  socialists  used  every  method  of  attack," 
—  a  favorite  one  being  the  statement,  doubtless 
sometimes  honestly  made,  that  I  really  was  a 
socialist,  but  ''too  much  of  a  coward  to  say  so." 
I  remember  one  socialist  who  habitually  opened 
a  very  telling  address  he  was  in  the  habit  of  giving 
upon  the  street  corners,  by  holding  me  up  as  an 
awful  example  to  his  fellow-socialists,  as  one  of  their 
number  "who  had  been  caught  in  the  toils  of 
capitalism."  He  always  added  as  a  final  clinching 
of  the  statement,  that  he  knew  what  he  was  talk- 
ing about  because  he  was  a  member  of  the  Hull- 
House  Men's  Club.  When  I  ventured  to  say  to 
him  that  not  all  of  the  thousands  of  people  who 
belong  to  a  class  or  club  at  Hull-House  could  pos- 


58    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

sibly  know  my  personal  opinions,  and  to  mildly 
inquire  upon  what  he  founded  his  assertions,  he 
triumphantly  replied  that  I  had  once  admitted  to 
him  that  I  had  read  Sombart  and  Loria,  and  that 
any  one  of  sound  mind  must  see  the  inevitable  con- 
clusions of  such  master  reasonings. 

I  could  multiply  these  two  instances  a  hundred- 
fold, and  possibly  nothing  aided  me  to  stand  on 
my  own  feet  and  to  select  what  seemed  reasonable 
from  this  wilderness  of  dogma,  so  much  as  my  early 
encounter  with  genuine  zeal  and  affectionate  solici- 
tude, associated  with  what  I  could  not  accept  as 
the  whole  truth. 

I  do  not  wish  to  take  callow  writing  too  seriously, 
but  I  reproduce  from  an  oratorical  contest  the 
following  bit  of  premature  pragmatism,  doubtless 
due  much  more  to  temperament  than  to  percep- 
tion, because  I  am  still  ready  to  subscribe  to  it, 
although  the  grandiloquent  style  is,  I  hope,  a  thing 
of  the  past:  "Those  who  believe  that  Justice  is 
but  a  poetical  longing  within  us,  the  enthusiast 
who  thinks  it  will  come  in  the  form  of  a  millennium, 
those  who  see  it  established  by  the  strong  arm  of  a 
hero,  are  not  those  who  have  comprehended  the 
vast  truths  of  life.  The  actual  Justice  must  come 
by  trained  intelligence,  by  broadened  sympathies 
toward  the  individual  man  or  woman  who  crosses 
our  path ;  one  item  added  to  another  is  the  only 
method  by  which  to  build  up  a  conception  lofty 
enough  to  be  of  use  in  the  world." 


\J^ 


BOARDING-SCHOOL   IDEALS  59 

This  schoolgirl  receipt  has  been  tested  in  many 
later  experiences,  the  most  dramatic  of  which  came 
when  I  was  called  upon  by  a  manufacturmg  com- 
pany to  act  as  one  of  three  arbitrators  in  a  perplex- 
ing struggle  between  themselves,  a  group  of  trade- 
unionists     and    a    non-union    employee    of    their 
establishment.     The  non-union  man  who  was  the 
cause  of  the  difhculty  had  ten  years  before  sided 
with  his  employers  in  a  prolonged  strike  and  had 
bitterly  fought  the  union.     He  had  been  so  badly 
injured  at  that  time,  that  in  spite  of  long  months 
of  hospital  care  he  had  never  afterward  been  able 
to  do  a  full  day's  work,  although  his  employers  had 
retained  him  for  a  decade  at  full  pay  in  recognition 
of  his  loyalty.     At  the  end  of  ten  years  the  once 
defeated  union  was  strong  enough  to  enforce  its 
demands  for  a  union  shop,  and  in  spiteof  the  distaste 
of  the  firm  for  the   arrangement,  no  obstacle   to 
harmonious  relations  with  the  union  remained   but 
the  refusal  of  the  trade-unionists  to  receive  as  one 
of  their  members  the  old  crippled  employee,  whose 
spirit  was  broken  at  last  and  who  was  now  willing 
to  join  the  union  and  to  stand  with  his  old  enemies 
for  the  sake  of  retaining  his  place.  ^^  _       ^^ 

But  the  union  men  would  not  receive  "a  traitor, 
the  firm  flatlv  refused  to  dismiss  so  faithful  an 
employee,  the  busy  season  was  upon  them  and 
every  one  concerned  had  finally  agreed  to  abide 
without  appeal  by  the  decision  of  the  three  arbi- 
trators.    The   chairman   of  our   little   arbitration 


6o    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

committee,  a  venerable  judge,  quickly  demon- 
strated that  it  was  impossible  to  collect  trustworthy 
evidence  in  regard  to  the  events  already  ten  years 
old  which  lay  at  the  bottom  of  this  bitterness,  and 
we  soon  therefore  ceased  to  interview  the  conflicting 
witnesses  ;  the  second  member  of  the  committee 
sternly  bade  the  men  remember  that  the  most 
ancient  Hebraic  authority  gave  no  sanction  for 
holding  even  a  just  resentment  for  more  than  seven 
years,  and  at  last  we  all  settled  down  to  that  weari- 
some effort  to  secure  the  inner  consent  of  all  con- 
cerned, upon  which  alone  the  ''mystery  of  justice" 
as  Maeterlinck  has  told  us,  ultimately  depends. 
I  am  not  quite  sure  that  in  the  end  we  admin- 
istered justice,  but  certainly  employers,  trades- 
unionists  and  arbitrators  were  all  convinced  that 
justice  will  have  to  be  established  in  industrial 
affairs  with  the  same  care  and  patience  which  has 
been  necessary  for  centuries  in  order  to  institute 
it  in  men's  civic  relationships,  although  as  the  judge 
remarked  the  search  must  be  conducted  without 
much  help  from  precedent.  The  conviction  re- 
mained with  me,  that  however  long  a  time  might 
be  required  to  establish  justice  in  the  new  relation- 
ships of  our  raw  industrialism,  it  would  never  be 
stable  until  it  had  received  the  sanction  of  those 
upon  whom  the  present  situation  presses  so  harshly. 
Towards  the  end  of  our  four  years'  course  we 
debated  much  as  to  what  we  were  to  be,  and  long 
before  the  end  of    my    school  days    it   was    quite 


BOARDING-SCHOOL   IDEALS  6i_ 

settled  In  my  mind  that  I  should  study  medicine 
and  "live  with  jthepoor."  This  conclusiorP'of 
course  was  the  result  oTmany  things,  perhaps  epito- 
mized in  my  graduating  essay  on  "Cassandra" 
and  her  tragic  fate  "always  to  be  in  the  right,  and 
always  to  be  disbelieved  and  rejected." 

This  state  of  affairs,  it  may  readily  be  guessed, 
the  essay  held  to  be  an  example  of  the  feminine 
trait  of  mind  called  intuition,  "an  accurate  per- 
ception of  Truth  and  Justice,  which  rests  contented  — 
in  itself  and  will  make  no  effort  to  confirm  itself  or 
to  organize  through  existing  knowledge."  The 
essay  then  proceeds  —  I  am  forced  to  admit,  with  ^ 
overmuch  conviction  —  with  the  statement  that 
woman  can  only  "grow  accurate  and  intelligible 
by  the  thorough  study  of  at  least  one  branch  of 
physical  science,  for  only  with  eyes  thus  accus- 
tomed to  the  search  for  truth  can  she  detect  all 
self-deceit  and  fancy  in  herself  and  learn  to  express 
herself  without  dogmatism."  So  much  for  the  first 
part  of  the  thesis.  Having  thus  "gained  accuracy, 
would  woman  bring  this  force  to  bear  throughout 
morals  and  justice,  then  she  must  find  in  active 
labor  the  promptings  and  Inspirations  that  come 
from  growing  insight."  I  was  quite  certain  that 
by  following  these  directions  carefully,  In  the  end 
the  contemporary  woman  would  find  "her  faculties 
clear  and  acute  from  the  study  of  science,  and  her 
hand  upon  the  magnetic  chain  of  humanity." 

This  veneration  for  science  portrayed  in  my  final 


62    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

essay  was  doubtless  the  result  of  the  statements 
the  textbooks  were  then  making  of  what  was 
called  the  theory  of  evolution,  the  acceptance  of 
which  even  thirty  years  after  the  publication  of 
Darwin's  ''Origin  of  Species"  had  about  it  a  touch 
of  intellectual  adventure.  We  knew,  for  instance, 
that  our  science  teacher  had  accepted  this  theory, 
but  we  had  a  strong  suspicion  that  the  teacher  of 
Butler's  ''Analogy"  had  not.  We  chafed  at  the 
meagerness  of  the  college  library  in  this  direction, 
and  I  used  to  bring  back  in  my  handbag  books 
belonging  to  an  advanced  brother-in-law  who  had 
studied  medicine  in  Germany  and  who  therefore 
was  quite  emancipated.  The  first  gift  I  made  when 
I  came  into  possession  of  my  small  estate  the  year 
after  I  left  school,  was  a  thousand  dollars  to  the 
library  of  Rockford  College,  with  the  stipulation 
that  it  be  spent  for  scientific  books.  In  the  long 
vacations  I  pressed  plants,  stufiPed  birds  and  pounded 
rocks  in  some  vague  belief  that  I  was  approximat- 
ing the  new  method,  and  yet  when  my  step- 
brother who  was  becoming  a  real  scientist,  tried 
to  carry  me  along  with  him  Into  the  merest  out- 
skirts of  the  methods  of  research,  it  at  once  became 
evident  that  I  had  no  aptitude  and  was  unable  to 
follow  Intelligently  Darwin's  careful  observations  on 
\  the  earthworm.  I  made  an  heroic  effort,  although 
candor  compels  me  to  state  that  I  never  would  have 
finished  If  I  had  not  been  pulled  and  pushed  by 
my  really  ardent  companion,  who  In  addition  to  a 


BOARDING-SCHOOL   IDEALS  63 

multitude  of   earthworms    and  a  fine  microscope, 
possessed  untiring  tact  with  one  of  flagging  zeal. 

As  our  boarding-school  days  neared  the  end,  in 
the  consciousness  of  approaching  separation  we 
vowed  eternal  allegiance  to  our  ''early  _  ideals," 
and  premised  each  other  we  would  ''never  abandon 
them  without  conscious  justification,"  and  we  often 
warned  each  other  of  "the  perils  of  self-tradition." 

We  believed,  in  our  sublime  self-conceit,  that  the  ^ 
difficulty  of  life  would  lie  solely  in  the  direction 
of  losing  these  precious  ideals  of  ours,  of  failing  to 
follow  the  way  of  martyrdom  and  high  purpose  we 
had  marked  out  for  ourselves,  and  we  had  no  notion 
of  the  obscure  paths  of  tolerance,  just  allowance, 
and  self-blame  wherein,  if  wx  held  our  minds  open, 
we  might  learn  something  of  the  mystery  and  com- 
plexity of  life's  purposes.  ^ 

The  year  after  I  had  left  college  I  came  back, 
with  a  classmate,  to  receive  the  degree  wx  had 
so  eagerly  anticipated.  Two  of  the  graduating 
class  werje  also  ready  and  four  of  us  were  dubbed 
B.A.  on  the  very  day  that  Rockford  Seminary 
was  declared  a  college  in  the  midst  of  tumultu- 
ous anticipations.  Having  had  a  year  outside  of 
college  walls  in  that  trying  land  between  vague 
hope  and  definite  attainment,  I  had  become  very 
much  sobered  in  my  desire  for  a  degree,  and  was 
already  beginning  to  emerge  from  that  rose-colored 
mist  with  which  the  dream  of  youth  so  readily 
envelops  the  future. 


64    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

^  Whatever  may  have  been  the  perils  of  self-tradi- 
^  tlon,  I  certainly  did  not  escape  them,  for  it  required 
eight  years  —  from  the  time  I  left  Rockford  in  the 
summer  of  1881  until  Hull-House  was  opened  in 
the  autumn  of  1889  —  to  formulate  my  convictions 
even  in  the  least  satisfactory  manner,  much  less 
to  reduce  them  to  a  plan  for  action.  During  most 
of  that  time  I  was  absolutely  at  sea  so  far  as  any 
moral  purpose  was  concerned,  clinging  only  to  the 
desire  to  live  in  a  really  living  world  and  refusing 
to  be  content  with  a  shadowy  intellectual  or  aes- 
thetic reflection  of  it. 


Ellen  Gates  Starr. 


CHAPTER   IV 

The  Snare  of  Preparation 

The  winter  after  I  left  school  was  spent  In  the 
Woman's  Medical  College  of  Philadelphia,  but  the 
development  of  the  spinal  difficulty  which  had 
shadowed  me  from  childhood  forced  me  into 
Dr.  Weir  Mitchell's  hospital  for  the  late  spring,  and 
the  next  winter  I  was  literally  bound  to  a  bed  in 
my  sister's  house  for  six  months.  In  spite  of  its 
tedium,  the  long  winter  had  its  mitigations,  for 
after  the  first  few  weeks  I  was  able  to  read  with  a 
luxurious  consciousness  of  leisure,  and  I  remember 
opening  the  first  volume  of  Carlyle's  ''Frederick 
the  Great"  with  a  lively  sense  of  gratitude  that  It 
was  not  Gray's  ''Anatomy,"  having  found,  like 
many  another,  that  general  culture  Is  a  much  easier 
undertaking  than  professional  study.  The  long 
illness  Inevitably  put  aside  the  Immediate  prose- 
cution of  a  medical  course,  and  although  I  had 
passed  my  examinations  creditably  enough  In  the 
required  subjects  for  the  first  year,  I  was  very  glad 
to  have  a  physician's  sanction  for  giving  up  clinics 
and  dissecting  rooms  and  to  follow  his  prescription 
of  spending  the  next  two  years  in  Europe. 

Before  I  returned  to  America  I  had  discovered 

?1  F  65 


66    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

that  there  were  other  genuine  reasons  for  living 
among  the  poor  than  that  of  practicing  medicine 
upon  them,  and  my  brief  foray  into  the  profession 
was  never  resumed. 

The  long  illness  left  me  in  a  state  of  nervous  ex- 
haustion with  which  I  struggled  for  years,  traces 
of  it  remaining  long  after  Hull-House  was  opened 
in  1889.  At  the  best  it  allowed  me  but  a  limited 
amount  of  energy,  so  that  doubtless  there  was  much 
nervous  depression  at  the  foundation  of  the  spiritual 
struggles  which  this  chapter  is  forced  to  record. 
However,  it  could  not  have  been  all  due  to  my 
health,  for  as  my  wise  little  notebook  sententiously 
remarked,  "  In  his  own  way  each  man  must  struggle, 
lest  the  moral  law  become  a  far-oif  abstraction 
utterly  separated  from  his  active  life." 

It  would,  of  course,  be  impossible  to  remember 
that  some  of  these  struggles  ever  took  place  at  all, 
were  it  not  for  these  selfsame  notebooks,  in  which, 
however,  I  no  longer  wrote  in  moments  of  high 
resolve,  but  judging  from  the  internal  evidence 
afforded  by  the  books  themselves,  only  in  moments 
of  deep  depression  when  overwhelmed  by  a  sense 
of  failure. 

One  of  the  most  poignant  of  these  experiences, 
which  occurred  during  the  first  few  months  after 
our  landing  upon  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic, 
was  on  a  Saturday  night,  when  I  received  an  Ine- 
radicable impression  of  the  wretchedness  of  East 
London,  and  also  saw  for  the  first  time  the  over- 


THE   SNARE   OF   PREPARATION      (^^ 

crowded  quarters  of  a  great  city  at  midnight.  A 
small  party  of  tourists  were  taken  to  the  East  End 
by  a  city  missionary  to  witness  the  Saturday  night 
sale  of  decaying  vegetables  and  fruit,  which,  owing 
to  the  Sunday  laws  In  London,  could  not  be  sold 
until  Monday,  and,  as  they  were  beyond  safe 
keeping,  were  disposed  of  at  auction  as  late  as 
possible  on  Saturday  night.  On  Mile  End  Road, 
from  the  top  of  an  omnibus  which  paused  at  the 
end  of  a  dingy  street  lighted  by  only  occasional 
flares  of  gas,  we  saw  two  huge  masses  of  Ill-clad 
people  clamoring  around  two  hucksters'  carts. 
They  were  bidding  their  farthings  and  ha'pennies 
for  a  vegetable  held  up  by  the  auctioneer,  which 
he  at  last  scornfully  flung,  with  a  gibe  for  Its 
cheapness,  to  the  successful  bidder.  In  the  momen- 
tary pause  only  one  man  detached  himself  from  the 
groups.  He  had  bidden  In  a  cabbage,  and  when 
It  struck  his  hand,  he  Instantly  sat  down  on  the 
curb,  tore  it  with  his  teeth,  and  hastily  devoured 
it,  unwashed  and  uncooked  as  it  was.  He  and  his 
fellows  were  types  of  the  "submerged  tenth,"  as 
our  missionary  guide  told  us,  with  some  little 
satisfaction  In  the  then  new  phrase,  and  he  further 
added  that  so  many  of  them  could  scarcely  be  seen 
In  one  spot  save  at  this  Saturday  night  auction, 
the  desire  for  cheap  food  being  apparently  the  one 
thing  which  could  move  them  simultaneously. 
They  were  huddled  Into  ill-fitting,  cast-off  clothing, 
the    ragged   finery   which   one   sees   only   in    East 


68     TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

London.  Their  pale  faces  were  dominated  by 
that  most  unlovely  of  human  expressions,  the 
cunning  and  shrewdness  of  the  bargain-hunter 
who  starves  if  he  cannot  make  a  successful  trade, 
and  yet  the  final  impression  was  not  of  ragged, 
tawdry  clothing  nor  of  pinched  and  sallow  faces, 
but  of  myriads  of  hands,  empty,  pathetic,  nerve- 
less and  workworn,  showing  white  in  the  uncer- 
tain light  of  the  street,  and  clutching  forward  for 
food  which  was  already  unfit  to  eat. 

Perhaps  nothing  is  so  fraught  with  significance 
as  the  human  hand,  this  oldest  tool  with  which  man 
has  dug  his  way  from  savagery,  and  with  which  he 
is  constantly  groping  forward.  I  have  never  since 
been  able  to  see  a  number  of  hands  held  upward, 
even  when  they  are  moving  rhythmically  in  a 
calisthenic  exercise,  or  when  they  belong  to  a  class 
of  chubby  children  who  wave  them  in  eager  re- 
sponse to  a  teacher's  query,  without  a  certain  re- 
vival of  this  memory,  a  clutching  at  the  heart 
reminiscent  of  the  despair  and  resentment  which 
seized  me  then. 

For  the  following  weeks  I  went  about  London 
almost  furtively,  afraid  to  look  down  narrow  streets 
and  alleys  lest  they  disclose  again  this  hideous 
human  need  and  suffering.  I  carried  with  me  for 
days  at  a  time  that  curious  surprise  we  experience 
when  we  first  come  back  into  the  streets  after  days 
given  over  to  sorrow  and  death  ;  we  are  bewildered 
that  the  world  should  be  going  on  as  usual  a^n 


THE   SNARE   OF   PREPARATION       69 

unable  to  determine  which  is  real,  the  inner  pang 
or  the  outward  seeming.  In  time  all  huge  Lon- 
don came  to  seem  unreal  save  the  poverty  in  its 
East  End.  During  the  following  two  years  on  the 
continent,  while  I  was  irresistibly  drawn  to  the 
poorer  quarters  of  each  city,  nothing  among  the 
beggars  of  South  Italy-  nor  among  the  saltminers 
of  Austria  carried  with  it  the  same  conviction  of 
human  wretchedness  which  was  conveyed  by  this 
momentary  glimpse  of  an  East  London  street. 
It  was,  of  course,  a  most  fragmentary  and  lurid 
view  of  the  poverty  of  East  London,  and  quite 
unfair.  I  should  have  been  shown  either  less  or 
more,  for  I  went  away  with  no  notion  of  the  hun- 
dreds of  men  and  women  who  had  gallantly  iden- 
tified their  fortunes  with  these  empty-handed 
people,  and  who,  in  church  and  chapel,  "relief 
works,"  and  charities,  were  at  least  making  an 
effort  towards  its  mitigation. 

Our  visit  was  made  in  November,  1883,  the  very 
year  when  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette  exposure  started 
"The  Bitter  Cry  of  Outcast  London,"  and  the  con- 
science of  England  was  stirred  as  never  before  over 
this  joyless  city  in  the  East  End  of  its  capital. 
Even  then,  vigorous  and  drastic  plans  were  being 
discussed,  and  a  splendid  program  of  municipal  re- 
forms was  already  dimly  outlined.  Of  all  these, 
however,  I  had  heard  nothing  but  the  vaguest 
rumor. 

No  comfort  came  to  me  then  from  any  source, 


70    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

and  the  painful  impression  was  increased  because 
at  the  very  moment  of  looking  down  the  East  Lon- 
don street  from  the  top  of  the  omnibus,  I  had  been 
sharply  and  painfully  reminded  of  ''The  Vision  of 
Sudden  Death"  which  had  confronted  De  Quincey 
one  summer's  night  as  he  was  being  driven  through 
rural  England  on  a  high  mail  coach.  Two  ab- 
sorbed lovers  suddenly  appear  between  the  narrow, 
blossoming  hedgerows  in  the  direct  path  of  the 
huge  vehicle  which  is  sure  to  crush  them  to  their 
death.  De  Quincey  tries  to  send  them  a  warning 
shout,  but  finds  himself  unable  to  make  a  sound 
because  his  mind  is  hopelessly  entangled  in  an 
endeavor  to  recall  the  exact  lines  from  the  "Iliad" 
which  describe  the  great  cry  with  which  Achilles 
alarmed  all  Asia  militant.  Only  after  his  memory 
responds  is  his  will  released  from  its  momentary 
paralysis,  and  he  rides  on  through  the  fragrant 
night  with  the  horror  of  the  escaped  calamity 
thick  upon  him,  but  he  also  bears  with  him  the 
consciousness  that  he  had  given  himself  over  so 
many  years  to  classic  learning  —  that  when  sud- 
denly called  upon  for  a  quick  decision  in  the  world 
of  life  and  death,  he  had  been  able  to  act  only 
through  a  literary  suggestion. 

^^This  is  what  we  were  all  doing,  lumbering  our 
minds  with  literature  that  only  served  to  cloud  the 
really  vital  situation  spread  before  our  eyes.  It 
seemed  to  me  too  preposterous  that  in  my  first 
view  of  the  horror  of  East  London  I  should  hav  i 


THE   SNARE   OF   PREPARATION      71 

recalled  De  Quincey's  literary  description  of  the 
literary  suggestion  which  had  once  paralyzed  him. 
In  my  disgust  it  all  appeared  a  hateful,  vicious 
circle  which  even  the  apostles  of  culture  themselves 
admitted,  for  had  not  one  of  the  greatest  among 
the  moderns  plainly  said  that  "conduct,  and  not 
culture  is  three  fourths  of  human  life." 

For  two  years  in  the  midst  of  my  distress  over 
the  poverty  which,  thus  suddenly  driven  into  my 
consciousness,  had  become  to  me  the  ''Welt- 
sc]imerz,";  there  was  mingled  a  sense  of  futility,  of 
misdirected  energy,  the  belief  that  the  pursuit  of 
cultivation  would  not  in  the  end  bring  either  solace 
or  relief.  I  gradually  reached  a  conviction  that 
the  first  generation  of  college  women  had  taken 
their  learning  too  quickly,  had  departed  too  sud- 
denly from  the  active,  emotional  life  led  by  their 
grandmothers  and  great-grandmothers ;  that  the 
contemporary  education  of  young  women  had 
developed  too  exclusively  the  power  of  acquiring 
knowledge  and  of  merely  receiving  impressions  ; 
that  somewhere  in  the  process  of  "being  educated" 
they  had  lost  that  simple  and  almost  automatic 
response  to  the  human  appeal,  that  old  healthful 
reaction  resulting  in  activity  from  the  mere  pres- 
ence of  suffering  or  of  helplessness  ;  that  they  are 
so  sheltered  and  pampered  they  have  no  chance 
even  to  make  "the  great  refusal." 

In  the  German  and  French  pensions,  which 
twenty-five  years  ago  were  crowded  with  American 


72    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

mothers  and  their  daughters  who  had  crossed  the 
seas    in    search   of   culture,    one   often   found   the 
mother  making  real  connection  with  the  life  about 
her,    using    her    inadequate    German    with    great 
fluency,  gayly  measuring  the  enormous  sheets  or 
exchanging    recipes    with    the    German    Hausfrau, 
visiting  impartially  the  nearest  kindergarten  and 
market,  making  an  atmosphere  of  her  own,  hearty 
and  genuine  as  far  as  it  went,  in  the  house  and  on 
the  street.     On  the  other  hand,  her  daughter  was 
critical   and    uncertain  of    her  linguistic    acquire- 
ments, and  only  at  ease  when  in  the  familiar  recep- 
tive attitude  afforded  by  the  art  gallery  and  the 
opera  house.     In  the  latter  she  was  swayed  and 
moved,  appreciative  of  the  power  and  charm  of  the 
music,  intelligent  as  to  the  legend  and  poetry  of 
the  plot,  finding  use  for  her  trained  and  developed 
powers  as  she  sat  "being  cultivated"  in  the  famil- 
iar atmosphere  of  the  classroom  which  had,    as   it 
were,  become  sublimated  and  romanticized. 

I  remember  a  happy  busy  mother  who,  compla- 
cent with  the  knowledge  that  her  daughter  daily 
devoted  four  hours  to  her  music,  looked  up  from  her 
knitting  to  say,  "If  I  had  had  your  opportunities 
when  I  was  young,  my  dear,  I  should  have  been  a 
very  happy  girl.  I  always  had  musical  talent,  but 
such  training  as  I  had,  foolish  little  songs  and 
waltzes  and  not  time  for  half  an  hour's  practice 
a  day." 

The  mother  did  not  dream  of  the  sting  her  words 


THE    SNARE   OF   PREPARATION       73 

left  and  that  the  sensitive  girl  appreciated  only  too 
well  that  her  opportunities  were  fine  and  unusual, 
but  she  also  knew  that  in  spite  of  some  facility  and 
much  good  teaching  she  had  no  genuine  talent  and 
never  would  fulfill  the  expectations  of  her  friends. 
She  looked  back  upon  her  mother's  girlhood  with 
positive  envy  because  it  was  so  full  of  happy  in- 
dustry and  extenuating  obstacles,  with  undis- 
turbed opportunity  to  believe  that  her  talents  were 
unusual.  The  girl  looked  wistfully  at  her  mother, 
but  had  not  the  courage  to  cry  out  what  was  in 
her  heart  :  "I  might  believe  I  had  unusual  talent 
if  I  did  not  know  what  good  music  was  ;  I  might 
enjoy  half  an  hour's  practice  a  day  if  I  were  busy 
and  happy  the  rest  of  the  time.  You  do  not  know 
what  life  means  when  all  the  difficulties  are  re- 
moved !  I  am  simply  smothered  and  sickened 
with  advantages.  It  is  like  eating  a  sweet  dessert 
the  first  thing  in  the  morning." 

This,  then,  was  the  difiiculty,  this  sweet  dessert 
in  the  morning  and  the  assumption  that  the 
sheltered,  educated  girl  has  nothing  to  do  with  the 
bitter  poverty  and  the  social  maladjustment  which 
is  all  about  her,  and  which,  after  all,  cannot  be 
concealed,  for  it  breaks  through  poetry  and  litera- 
ture in  a  burning  tide  which  overwhelms  her;  it 
peers  at  her  in  the  form  of  heavy-laden  market 
women  and  underpaid  street  laborers,  gibing  her 
with  a  sense  of  her  uselessness. 

I  recall  one  snowy  morning  in  Saxe-Coburg,  look- 


74    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

ing  from  the  window  of  our  little  hotel  upon  the 
town  square,  that  we  saw  crossing  and  recrossing 
it  a  single  file  of  women  with  semicircular  heavy 
wooden  tanks  fastened  upon  their  backs.  They 
were  carrying  in  this  primitive  fashion  to  a  remote 
cooling  room  these  tanks  filled  with  a  hot  brew  in- 
cident to  one  stage  of  beer  making.  The  women 
were  bent  forward,  not  only  under  the  weight  which 
they  were  bearing,  but  because  the  tanks  were  so 
high  that  it  would  have  been  impossible  for  them 
to  have  lifted  their  heads.  Their  faces  and  hands, 
reddened  in  the  cold  morning  air,  showed  clearly 
the  white  scars  where  they  had  previously  been 
scalded  by  the  hot  stuff  which  splashed  if  they 
stumbled  ever  so  little  on  their  way.  Stung  into 
action  by  one  of  those  sudden  indignations  against 
cruel  conditions  which  at  times  fill  the  young  with 
unexpected  energy,  I  found  myself  across  the  square, 
in  company  with  mine  host,  interviewing  the  phleg- 
matic owner  of  the  brewery  who  received  us  with 
exasperating  indifference,  or  rather  received  me, 
for  the  innkeeper  mysteriously  slunk  away  as  soon 
as  the  great  magnate  of  the  town  began  to  speak. 
I  went  back  to  a  breakfast  for  which  I  had  lost  my 
appetite,  as  I  had  for  Gray's  ''Life  of  Prince  Al- 
bert" and  his  wonderful  tutor.  Baron  Stockmar, 
which  I  had  been  reading  late  the  night  before. 
The  book  had  lost  its  fascination;  how  could 
a  good  man,  feeling  so  keenly  his  obligation  ''to 
make  princely  the  mind  of  his  prince,"  ignore  such 


THE    SNARE   OF   PREPARATION       75 

conditions  of  life  for  the  multitude  of  humble, 
hard-working  folk.  We  were  spending  two  months 
in  Dresden  that  winter,  given  over  to  much  read- 
ing of  ''The  History  of  Art"  and  to  much  visiting 
of  its  art  gallery  and  opera  house,  and  after  such 
an  experience  I  would  invariably  suffer  a  moral 
revulsion  against  this  feverish  search  after  culture. 
It  was  doubtless  in  such  moods  that  I  founded  my 
admiration  for  Albrecht  Diirer,  taking  his  w^on- 
derful  pictures,  however,  in  the  most  unorthodox 
manner,  merely  as  human  documents.  I  was 
chiefly  appealed  to  by  his  unwillingness  to  lend 
himself  to  a  smooth  and  cultivated  view  of  life, 
by  his  determination  to  record  its  frustrations 
and  even  the  hideous  forms  which  darken  the  day 
for  our  human  imagination  and  to  ignore  no 
human  complications.  I  believed  that  his  can- 
vases intimated  the  coming  religious  and  social 
changes  of  the  Reformation  and  the  peasants'  wars, 
that  they  were  surcharged  with  pity  for  the  down- 
trodden, that  his  sad  knights,  gravely  standing 
guard,  were  longing  to  avert  that  shedding  of  blood 
which  is  sure  to  occur  when  men  forget  how  com- 
plicated life  is  and  insist  upon  reducing  it  to  logical 
dogmas. 

The  largest  sum  of  money  that  I  ever  ventured 
to  spend  in  Europe  was  for  an  engraving  of  his 
''St.  Hubert,"  the  background  of  which  was  said 
to  be  from  an  original  Diirer  plate.  There  is 
little  doubt,  I  am  afraid,  that  the  background  as 


^6    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 


well  as  the  figures  "were  put  in  at  a  later  date," 
but  the  purchase  at  least  registered  the  high-water 
mark  of  my  enthusiasm. 

The  wonder  and  beauty  of  Italy  later  brought 
healing  and  some  relief  to  the  paralyzing  sense  of 
the  futility  of  all   artistic   and   Intellectual   effort 

when  disconnected 
from  the  ultimate  test 
of  the  conduct  it  in- 
spired. The  serene 
and  soothing  touch  of 
history  also  aroused 
old  enthusiasms,  al- 
though some  of  their 
manifestations  were 
such  as  one  smiles  over 
'-- -—  "  :     -■- .  ._r      more   easily  In   retro- 

spection than  at  the 
moment.  I  fancy  that  it  was  no  smiling  matter 
to  several  people  In  our  party,  whom  I  induced 
to  walk  for  three  miles  In  the  hot  sunshine  beating 
down  upon  the  Roman  Campagna,  that  we  might 
enter  the  Eternal  City  on  foot  through  the  Porta 
del  Popolo,  as  pilgrims  had  done  for  centuries. 
To  be  sure,  we  had  really  entered  Rome  the  night 
before,  but  the  railroad  station  and  the  hotel  might 
have  been  anywhere  else,  and  we  had  been  driven 
beyond  the  walls  after  breakfast  and  stranded  at 
the  very  spot  where  the  pilgrims  always  said  "Ecco 
Roma,"   as  they  caught  the  first  glimpse  of  St. 


THE   SNARE   OF   PREPARATION      'i^ 

Peter's  dome.  This  melodramatic  entrance  into 
Rome,  or  rather  pretended  entrance,  was  the  pre- 
lude to  days  of  enchantment,  and  I  returned  to 
Europe  two  years  later  in  order  to  spend  a  winter 
there  and  to  carry  out  a  great  desire  to  systemati- 
cally study  the  Catacombs.  In  spite  of  my  dis- 
trust of  "advantages"  I  was  apparently  not  yet 
so  cured  but  that  I  wanted  more  of  them. 

The  two  years  which  elapsed  before  I  again 
found  myself  in  Europe  brought  their  inevitable 
changes.  Family  arrangements  had  so  come  about 
that  I  had  spent  three  or  four  months  of  each  of  the 
intervening  winters  in  Baltimore,  where  I  seemed 
to  have  reached  the  nadir  of  my  nervous  depres- 
sion and  sense  of  maladjustment,  in  spite  of  my 
interest  in  the  fascinating  lectures  given  there  by 
Lanciani  of  Rome,  and  a  definite  course  of  reading 
under  the  guidance  of  a  Johns  Hopkins  lecturer 
upon  the  United  Italy  movement.  In  the  latter 
I  naturally  encountered  the  influence  of  Mazzini, 
which  was  a  source  of  great  comfort  to  me,  although 
perhaps  I  went  too  suddenly  from  a  contempla- 
tion of  his  wonderful  ethical  and  philosophical 
appeal  to  the  workingmen  of  Italy,  directly  to  the 
lecture  rooms  at  Johns  Hopkins  University,  for 
I  was  certainly  much  disillusioned  at  this  time  as  to 
the  effect  of  intellectual  pursuits  upon  moral  de- 
velopment. 

The  summers  were  spent  in  the  old  home  in 
northern    Illinois,    and    one    Sunday    morning    I 


78     TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

received  the  rite  of  baptism  and  became  a  member 
of  the  Presbyterian  church  in  the  village.  At  this 
time  there  was  certainly  no  outside  pressure  push- 
ing me  towards  such  a  decision,  and  at  twenty-five 
one  does  not  ordinarily  take  such  a  step  from  a 
mere  desire  to  conform.  While  I  was  not  con- 
scious of  any  emotional  "conversion,"  I  took  upon 
myself  the  outward  expressions  of  the  religious 
life  with  all  humility  and  sincerity.  It  was  doubt- 
less true  that  I  was 

"Weary  of  myself  and  sick  of  asking 
What  I  am  and  what  I  ought  to  be," 

and  that  various  cherished  safeguards  and  claims 
to  self-dependence  had  been  broken  into  by  many 
piteous  failures.  But  certainly  I  had  been  brought 
to  the  conclusion  that  "sincerely  to  give  up  one's 
conceit  or  hope  of  being  good  in  one's  own  right 
is  the  only  door  to  the  Universe's  deeper  reaches." 
Perhaps  the  young  clergyman  recognized  this  as 
the  test  of  the  Christian  temper,  at  any  rate  he 
required  little  assent  to  dogma  or  miracle,  and  as- 
sured me  that  while  both  the  ministry  and  the 
officers  of  his  church  were  obliged  to  subscribe  to 
doctrines  of  well-known  severity,  the  faith  required 
of  the  laity  was  almost  early  Christian  in  its  sim- 
plicity. I  was  conscious  of  no  change  from  my 
childish  acceptance  of  the  teachings  of  the  Gospels, 
but  at  this  moment  something  persuasive  within 
made  me  long  for  an  outward  symbol  of  fellowship, 


THE   SNARE   OF   PREPARATION       79 

some  bond  of  peace,  some  blessed  spot  where  unity 
of  spirit  might  claim  right  of  way  over  all  differ- 
ences. There  was  also  growing  within  me  an  al- 
most passionate  devotion  to  the  ideals  of  democracy, 
and  when  in  all  history  had  these  ideals  been  so 
thrillingly  expressed  as  when  the  faith  of  the 
fisherman  and  the  slave  had  been  boldly  opposed 
to  the  accepted  moral  belief  that  the  well-being  of 
a  privileged  few  might  justly  be  built  upon  the 
ignorance  and  sacrifice  of  the  many  ?  Who  was  I, 
with  my  dreams  of  universal  fellowship,  that  I  did 
not  identify  myself  with  the  institutional  statement 
of  this  belief,  as  it  stood  in  the  little  village  in 
which  I  was  born,  and  without  which  testimony  in 
each  remote  hamlet  of  Christendom  it  would  be 
so  easy  for  the  world  to  slip  back  into  the  doctrines 
of  selection  and  aristocracy  ?  "~ 

In  one  of  the  intervening  summers  between  these 
European  journeys  I  visited  a  western  state  where 
I  had  formerly  invested  a  sum  of  money  in  mort- 
gages. I  was  much  horrified  by  the  wretched 
conditions  among  the  farmers,  which  had  resulted 
from  a  long  period  of  drought,  and  one  forlorn  pic- 
ture was  fairly  burned  into  my  mind.  A  number" 
of  starved  hogs  —  collateral  for  a  promissory 
note  —  were  huddled  into  an  open  pen.  Their 
backs  were  humped  in  a  curious,  camel-like  fashion, 
and  they  were  devouring  one  of  their  own  number, 
the  latest  victim  of  absolute  starvation  or  possibly 
merely  the  one  least  able  to  defend  himself  against 


8o    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

their  voracious  hunger.  The  farmer's  wife  looked 
on  indifferently,  a  picture  of  despair  as  she  stood 
in  the  door  of  the  bare,  crude  house,  and  the  two 
children  behind  her,  whom  she  vainly  tried  to  keep 
out  of  sight,  continually  thrust  forward  their  faces 
almost  covered  by  masses  of  coarse,  sunburned 
hair,  and  their  little  bare  feet  so  black,  so  hard,  the 
great  cracks  so  filled  with  dust  that  they  looked 
like  flattened  hoofs.  The  children  could  not  be 
compared  to  anything  so  joyous  as  satyrs,  al- 
though they  appeared  but  half-human.  It  seemed 
to  me  quite  impossible  to  receive  interest  from 
mortgages  placed  upon  farms  which  might  at  any 
season  be  reduced  to  such  conditions,  and  with 
great  inconvenience  to  my  agent  and  doubtless 
with  hardship  to  the  farmers,  as  speedily  as  pos- 
sible I  withdrew  all  my  investment.  But  some- 
thing had  to  be  done  with  the  money,  and  in  my 
reaction  against  unseen  horrors  I  bought  a  farm 
near  my  native  village  and  also  a  flock  of  innocent- 
looking  sheep.  My  partner  in  the  enterprise  had 
not  chosen  the  shepherd's  lot  as  a  permanent  occu- 
pation, but  hoped  to  speedily  finish  his  college 
course  upon  half  the  proceeds  of  our  venture. 
This  pastoral  enterprise  still  seems  to  me  to  have 
been  essentially  sound,  both  economically  and 
morally,  but  perhaps  one  partner  depended  too 
much  upon  the  impeccability  of  her  motives  and 
the  other  found  himself  too  preoccupied  with  study 
to  know  that  it  is  not  a  real  kindness  to  bed  a 


THE   SNARE   OF   PREPARATION      8i 

sheepfold  with  straw,  for  certainly  the  venture 
ended  in  a  spectacle  scarcely  less  harrowing  than 
the  memory  it  was  designed  to  obliterate.  At 
least  the  sight  of  two  hundred  sheep  with  four 
rotting  hoofs  each,  was  not  reassuring  to  one 
whose  conscience  craved  economic  peace.  A  for- 
tunate series  of  sales  of  mutton,  wool,  and  farm 
enabled  the  partners  to  end  the  enterprise  without 
loss,  and  they  passed  on,  one  to  college  and  the 
other  to  Europe,  if  not  wiser,  certainly  sadder  for 
the  experience. 

It  was   during  this   second  journey  to   Europe 
that  I  attended  a  meeting  of  the  London  match     y 
girls  who  were  on  strike  and  who  met  daily  under     '' 
the  leadership  of  well-known  labor  men  of  London. 
The  low  wages  that  were  reported  at  the  meetings, 
the   phossy  jaw  which   was   described   and   occa- 
sionally   exhibited,    the    appearance    of    the    girls 
themselves  I  did  not,  curiously  enough,  In  any  wise 
connect  with  what  was  called  the  labor  movement,      / 
nor  did   I  understand  the  efforts  of  the  London     ^ 
trades-unionists,     concerning    whom    I    held    the 
vaguest  notions.     But  of  course  this  impression  of     \ 
human  misery  was  added  to  the  others  which  were 
already  making  me  so  wretched.     I  think  that  up 
to  this  time  I  was  still  filled  with  the  sense  which 
Wells   describes   In  one  of   his  young   characters, 
that   somewhere  in  Church  or    State  are  a  body 
of  authoritative  people  who  will  put  things  to  rights 
as  soon  as  they  really  know  what  Is  wrong.      Such 


82    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE  , 

a  young  person  persistently  believes  that  behind 
all  suffering,  behind  sin  and  want,  must  He  redeem- 
ing magnanimity.  He  may  Imagine  the  world  to 
be  tragic  and  terrible,  but  It  never  for  an  Instant 
occurs  to  him  that  It  may  be  contemptible  or 
squalid  or  self-seeking.  Apparently  I  looked  upon 
the  efforts  of  the  trades-unionists  as  I  did  upon 
those  of  Frederic  Harrison  and  the  Positivlsts 
whom  I  heard  the  next  Sunday  In  Newton  Hall, 
as  a  manifestation  of  ^'loyalty  to  humanity"  and 
an  attempt  to  aid  in  Its  progress.  I  was  enor- 
mously interested  in  the  Positivlsts  during  these 
European  years  ;  I  imagined  that  their  philosophical 
conception  of  man's  religious  development  might 
include  all  expressions  of  that  for  which  so  many 
ages  of  men  have  struggled  and  aspired.  I  vaguely 
hoped  for  this  universal  comity  when  I  stood  In 
Stonehenge,  on  the  Acropolis  in  Athens,  or  In  the 
Sistine  Chapel  in  the  Vatican.  But  never  did  I  so 
desire  it  as  in  the  cathedrals  of  Winchester,  Notre 
Dame,  Amiens.  One  winter's  day  I  traveled 
from  Munich  to  Ulm  because  I  imagined  from 
what  the  art  books  said  that  the  cathedral  horded 
a  medieval  statement  of  the  Positivlsts'  final  syn- 
thesis, prefiguring  their  conception  of  a  ''Supreme 
Humanity." 

In  this  I  was  not  altogether  disappointed.  The 
religious  history  carved  on  the  choir  stalls  at  Ulm 
contained  Greek  philosophers  as  well  as  Hebrew 
prophets,  and  among  the  disciples  and  saints  stood 


THE   SNARE  OF   PREPARATION      83 

the  discoverer  of  music  and  a  builder  of  pagan 
temples.  Even  then  I  was  startled,  forgetting  for 
the  moment  the  religious  revolutions  of  south 
Germany,  to  catch  sight  of  a  window  showing 
Luther  as  he  affixed  his  thesis  on  the  door  at 
Wittenberg,  the  picture  shining  clear  in  the  midst 
of  the  older  glass  of  saint  and  symbol. 

My  smug  notebook  states  that  all  this  was 
an  admission  that  "the  saints  but  embodied  fine 
action,"  and  it  proceeds  at  some  length  to  set  forth 
my  hope  for  a  "cathedral  of  humanity,"  which 
should  be  "capacious  enough  to  house  a  fellowship 
of  common  purpose,"  and  which  should  be  "beau- 
tiful enough  to  persuade  men  to  hold  fast  to  the 
vision  of  human  solidarity."  It  is  quite  impos- 
sible for  me  to  reproduce  this  experience  at  Ulm 
unless  I  quote  pages  more  from  the  notebook  in 
which  I  seem  to  have  written  half  the  night, 
in  a  fever  of  composition  cast  in  ill-digested  phrases 
from  Comte.  It  doubtless  reflected  also  something 
of  the  faith  of  the  Old  Catholics,  a  charming  group 
of  whom  I  had  recently  met  in  Stuttgart,  and  the 
same  mood  is  easily  traced  in  my  early  hopes  for 
the  Settlement  that  it  should  unite  in  the  fellow- 
ship of  the  deed  those  of  widely  differing  religious 
beliefs. 

The  beginning  of  1887  found  our  little  party  of 
three  in  very  picturesque  lodgings  in  Rome,  and 
settled  into  a  certain  student's  routine.  But  my 
study  of  the  Catacombs  was  brought  to  an  abrupt 


84    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

end  In  a  fortnight  by  a  severe  attack  of  sciatic 
rheumatism,  which  kept  me  in  Rome  with  a 
trained  nurse  during  many  weeks,  and  later  sent 
me  to  the  Riviera  to  lead  an  invalid's  life  once 
more.  Although  my  Catacomb  lore  thus  re- 
mained hopelessly  superficial,  it  seemed  to  me 
a  sufficient  basis  for  a  course  of  six  lectures 
which  I  timidly  offered  to  a  Deaconess's  Training 
School  during  my  first  winter  in  Chicago,  upon  the 
simple  ground  that  this  early  interpretation  of 
Christianity  is  the  one  which  should  be  presented 
to  the  poor,  urging  that  the  primitive  church 
was  composed  of  the  poor  and  that  it  was  they  who 
took  the  wonderful  news  to  the  more  prosperous 
Romans.  The  open-minded  head  of  the  school 
gladly  accepted  the  lectures,  arranging  that  the 
course  should  be  given  each  spring  to  her  graduat- 
ing class  of  Home  and  Foreign  Missionaries,  and 
at  the  end  of  the  third  year  she  invited  me  to  be- 
come one  of  the  trustees  of  the  school.  I  accepted  ^ 
and  attended  one  meeting  of  the  board,  but  never 
another,  because  some  of  the  older  members  ob- 
jected to  my  membership  on  the  ground  that  "no 
religious  instruction  was  given  at  Hull-House." 
I  remember  my  sympathy  for  the  embarrassment 
in  which  the  head  of  the  school  was  placed,  but 
if  I  needed  comfort,  a  bit  of  it  came  to  me  on  my 
way  home  from  the  trustees'  meeting  when  an 
Italian  laborer  paid  my  street  car  fare,  according 
to  the  custom  of  our  simpler   neighbors.     Upon 


THE   SNARE   OF   PREPARATION      85 

my  inquiry  of  the  conductor  as  to  whom  I  was 
indebted  for  the  little  courtesy,  he  replied  roughly 
enough,  "I  cannot  tell  one  dago  from  another 
when  they  are  in  a  gang,  but  sure,  any  one  of  them 
would  do  it  for  you  as  quick  as  they  would  for  the 
Sisters." 

It  is  hard  to  tell  just  when  the  very  simple  plan 
which  afterward  developed  into  the  Settlement 
began  to  form  itself  in  my  mind.  It  may  have 
been  even  before  I  went  to  Europe  for  the  second 
time,  but  I  gradually  became  convinced  that  it 
would  be  a  good  thing  to  rent  a  house  in  a  part  of 
the  city  where  many  primitive  and  actual  needs  are 
found,  in  which  young  women  who  had  been  given 
over  too  exclusively  to  study,  might  restore  a  bal- 
ance of  activity  along  traditional  lines  and  learn  of 
life  from  life  itself ;  where  they  might  try  out  some 
of  the  things  they  had  been  taught  and  put  truth 
to  "the  ultimate  test  of  the  conduct  it  dictates  or 
inspires."  I  do  not  remember  to  have  mentioned 
this  plan  to  any  one  until  we  reached  Madrid  in 
April,  1888. 

We  had  been  to  see  a  bull  fight  rendered  in^Ke 
most  magnificent  Spanish  style,  where  greatly  to 
my  surprise  and  horror,  I  found  that  I  had  seen,  with 
comparative  indifference,  five  bulls  and  many  more 
horses  killed.  The  sense  that  this  was  the  last 
survival  of  all  the  glories  of  the  amphitheater, 
the  illusion  that  the  riders  on  the  caparisoned 
horses  might  have  been  knights  of  a  tournament, 


86    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

or  the  matadore  a  slightly  armed  gladiator  facing 
his  martyrdom,  and  all  the  rest  of  the  obscure 
yet  vivid  associations  of  an  historic  survival,  had 
carried  me  beyond  the  endurance  of  any  of  the 
rest  of  the  party.  I  finally  met  them  in  the  foyer, 
stern  and  pale  with  disapproval  of  my  brutal 
endurance,  and  but  partially  recovered  from  the 
faintness  and  disgust  which  the  spectacle  itself 
had  produced  upon  them.  I  had  no  defense  to 
offer  to  their  reproaches  save  that  I  had  not 
thought  much  about  the  bloodshed ;  but  in  the 
evening  the  natural  and  inevitable  reaction  came, 
and  in  deep  chagrin  I  felt  myself  tried  and  con- 
demned, not  only  by  this  disgusting  experience 
but  by  the  entire  moral  situation  which  it  revealed. 
It  was  suddenly  made  quite  clear  to  me  that  I  was 
lulling  my  conscience  by  a  dreamer's  scheme,  that 
a  mere  paper  reform  had  become  a  defense  for 
continued  idleness,  and  that  I  was  making  it  a 
raison  d^etre  for  going  on  indefinitely  with  study  and 
travel.  It  is  easy  to  become  the  dupe  of  a  deferred 
purpose,  of  the  promise  the  future  can  never  keep, 
and  I  had  fallen  into  the  meanest  type  of  self- 
deception  in  making  myself  believe  that  all  this 
was  in  preparation  for  great  things  to  come.  Noth- 
ing less  than  the  moral  reaction  following  the  expe- 
rience at  a  bull-fight  had  been  able  to  reveal  to 
me  that  so  far  from  following  in  the  wake  of  a 
chariot  of  philanthropic  fire,  I  had  been  tied  to  the 
tail  of  the  veriest  ox-cart  of  self-seeking. 


THE   SNARE  OF   PREPARATION      87 

I  had  made  up  my  mind  that  next  day,  what- 
ever happened,  I  would  begin  to  carry  out  the  plan, 
if  only  by  talking  about  it.  I  can  well  recall  the 
stumbling  and  uncertainty  with  which  I  finally  set 
it  forth  to  Miss  Starr,  my  old-time  school  friend, 
who  was  one  of  our  party.  I  even  dared  to  hope 
that  she  might  join  in  carrying  out  the  plan,  but 
nevertheless  I  told  it  in  the  fear  of  that  disheart- 
ening experience  which  is  so  apt  to  afflict  our  most 
cherished  plans  when  they  are  at  last  divulged, 
when  we  suddenly  feel  that  there  is  nothing  there  to 
talk  about,  and  as  the  golden  dream  slips  through 
our  fingers  we  are  left  to  wonder  at  our  own  fatuous 
belief.  But  gradually  the  comfort  of  Miss  Starr's 
companionship,  the  vigor  and  enthusiasm  which  she 
brought  to  bear  upon  it,  told  both  in  the  growth  of 
the  plan  and  upon  the  sense  of  its  validity,  so  that 
by  the  time  we  had  reached  the  enchantment  of 
the  Alhambra,  the  scheme  had  become  convincing 
and  tangible  although  still  most  hazy  in  detail. 

A  month  later  we  parted  in  Paris,  Miss  Starr  to 
go  back  to  Italy,  and  I. to  journey  on  to  London  to 
secure  as  many  suggestions  as  possible  from  those 
wonderful  places  of  which  we  had  heard,  Toynbee 
Hall  and  the  People's  Palace.  So  that  it  finally 
came  about  that  in  June,  1888,  five  years  after 
my  first  visit  in  East  London,  I  found  myself  at 
Toynbee  Hall  equipped  not  only  with  a  letter  of 
introduction  from  Canon  Fremantle,  but  with 
high  expectations  and  a  certain  belief  that  what- 


r 


1. 


88    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

ever  perplexities  and  discouragement  concerning 
the  life  of  the  poor  were  in  store  for  me,  I  should 
at  least  know  something  at  first  hand  and  have 
the  solace  of  daily  activity.  I  had  confidence  that 
although  life  itself  might  contain  many  difficulties, 
the  period  of  mere  passive  receptivity  had  come  to 
an  end,  and  I  had  at  last  finished  with  the  ever- 
lasting ''preparation  for  life,"  however  ill-prepared 
I  might  be. 

It  was  not  until  years  afterward  that  I  came  upon 
Tolstoy's  phrase  ''the  snare  of  preparation,"  which 
he  insists  we  spread  before  the  feet  of  young  people, 
hopelessly  entangling  them  in  a  curious  Inactivity 
at  the  very  period  of  life  when  they  are  longing 
to  construct  the  world  anew  and  to  conform  it  to 
their  own  ideals. 


A  Hull-House  Interior. 


CHAPTER  V 

First  Days  at  Hull-House 

The  next  January  found  Miss  Starr  and  myself 
in  Chicago,  searching  for  a  neighborhood  in  which 
we  might  put  our  plans  into  execution.  In  our 
eagerness  to  win  friends  for  the  new  undertaking, 
we  utilized  every  opportunity  to  set  forth  the 
meaning  of  the  settlement  as  it  had  been  embodied 
in  Toynbee  Hall,  although  in  those  days  we  made 
no  appeal  for  money,  meaning  to  start  with  our 
own  slender  resources.  From  the  very  first  the 
plan  received  courteous  attention,  and  the  discus- 
sion, while  often  skeptical,  was  always  friendly. 
Professor  Swing  wrote  a  commendatory  column  in 
the  Evening  Journal,  and  our  early  speeches  were 
reported  quite  out  of  proportion  to  their  worth. 
I  recall  a  spirited  evening  at  the  home  of  Mrs. 
Wilmarth,  which  was  attended  by  that  renowned 
scholar,  Thomas  Davidson,  and  by  a  young  Eng- 
lishman who  was  a  member  of  the  then  new  Fabian 
society  and  to  whom  a  peculiar  glamour  was  at- 
tached because  he  had  scoured  knives  all  summer 
in  a  camp  of  high-minded  philosophers  in  the 
\dirondacks.  Our  new  little  plan  met  with  criti- 
cism, not  to  say  disapproval,  from  Mr.  Davidson, 

89 


90    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

who,  as  nearly  as  I  can  remember,  called  it  "one 
of   those    unnatural   attempts   to  understand  life'" 
through  cooperative  living." 

It  was  in  vain  we  asserted  that  the  collective 
living  was  not  an  essential  part  of  the  plan,  that 
we  would  always  scrupulously  pay  our  own  ex- 
penses, and  that  at  any  moment  we  might  decide 
to  scatter  through  the  neighborhood  and  to  live 
in  separate  tenements  ;  he  still  contended  that  the 
fascination  for  most  of  those  volunteering  residence 
would  lie  in  the  collective  living  aspect  of  the 
Settlement.  His  contention  was,  of  course,  essen- 
tially sound ;  there  is  a  constant  tendency  for  the 
residents  to  ''lose  themselves  in  the  cave  of  their 
own  companionship,"  as  the  Toynbee  Hall  phrase 
goes,  but  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  doubtless  true 
that  the  very  companionship,  the  give  and  take  of 
colleagues,  is  what  tends  to  keep  the  Settlement 
normal  and  in  touch  with  "the  world  of  things  as 
they  are."  I  am  happy  to  say  that  we  never 
resented  this  nor  any  other  difference  of  opinion, 
and  that  fifteen  years  later  Professor  Davidson 
handsomely  acknowledged  that  the  advantages  of 
a  group  far  outweighed  the  weaknesses  he  had 
early  pointed  out.  He  was  at  that  later  moment 
sharing  with  a  group  of  young  men,  on  the  East 
Side  of  New  York,  his  ripest  conclusions  in  phi- 
losophy and  was  much  touched  by  their  intelli- 
gent interest  and  absorbed  devotion.  I  think^ 
that  time  has  also  justified  our  early  contention 


FIRST   DAYS   AT  HULL-HOUSE       91-^ 

that  the  mere  foothold  of  a  house,  easily  accessible, 
ample  in  space,  hospitable  .and  tolerant  in  spirit, 
situated  in  the  midst  of  the  large  foreign  colonies 
which    so   easily   isolate   themselves    In   American 
cities,  would  be  in  itself  a  serviceable  thing  for     / 
Chicago.     I  am  not  so  sure  that  we  succeeded  m-J 
our  endeavors  "  to  make  social  intercourse  express--n 
tTie  growing  sense  of  the  economic  unity  of  society     / 
and  to  add  the  social  function  to  democracy."     But         L 
Hull-House  was  soberly  opened  on  the  theory  that     ^ 
the  dependence  of  classes  on  each  other  is  recipro- 
cal ;    and  that  as  the  social  relation  is  essentially  a 
reciprocal  relation,   It  gives   a  form  of  expression 
that  has  peculiar  value. 

In  our  search  for  a  vicinity  In  which  to  settle  we 
went  about  with  the  officers  of  the  compulsory 
i^ducation  department,  w^ith  city  missionaries  and 
with  the  newspaper  reporters  whom  I  recall  as 
a  much  older  set  of  men  than  one  ordinarily  asso- 
ciates with  that  profession,  or  perhaps  I  was  only 
sent  out  with  the  older  ones  on  what  they  must  all 
have  considered  a  quixotic  mission.  One  Sunday 
afternoon  in  the  late  winter  a  reporter  took  me  to 
visit  a  so-called  anarchist  sunday  school,  several 
of  which  were  to  be  found  on  the  northwest  side 
of  the  city.  The  young  man  In  charge  was  of  the 
German  student  type,  and  his  face  flushed  with 
enthusiasm  as  he  led  the  children  singing  one  of 
Koerner's  poems.  The  newspaper  man,  who  did 
not   understand   German,  asked   me  what   abomi- 


92    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

nable  stuff  they  were  singing,  but  he  seemed 
dissatisfied  with  my  translation  of  the  simple  words 
and  darkly  Intimated  that  they  were  "deep  ones," 
and  had  probably  "fooled"  me.  When  I  replied 
that  Koerner  was  an  ardent  German  poet  whose 
songs  Inspired  his  countrymen  to  resist  the  ag- 
gressions of  Napoleon,  and  that  his  bound  poems 
were  found  in  the  most  respectable  libraries,  he 
looked  at  me  rather  askance  and  I  then  and  there 
had  my  first  Intimation  that  to  treat  a  Chicago 
man,  who  Is  called  an  anarchist,  as  you  would  treat 
any  other  citizen.  Is  to  lay  yourself  open  to  deep 
suspicion. 

Another  Sunday  afternoon  In  the  early  spring,  on 
the  way  to  a  Bohemian  mission  in  the  carriage  of 
one  of  Its  founders,  we  passed  a  fine  old  house 
standing  well  back  from  the  street,  surrounded  on 
three  sides  by  a  broad  piazza  which  was  supported 
by  wooden  pillars  of  exceptionally  pure  Corinthian 
design  and  proportion.  I  was  so  attracted  by  the 
house  that  I  set  forth  to  visit  It  the  very  next  day, 
but  though  I  searched  for  It  then  and  for  several 
days  after,  I  could  not  find  It,  and  at  length  I  most 
reluctantly  gave  up  the  search. 

Three  weeks  later,  with  the  advice  of  several  of 
the  oldest  residents  of  Chicago,  Including  the  ex- 
mayor  of  the  city.  Colonel  Mason,  who  had  from 
the  first  been  a  warm  friend  to  our  plans,  we  decided 
upon  a  location  somewhere  near  the  junction  of 
Blue  Island  Avenue,  Halsted  Street,  and  Harrison 


FIRST  DAYS  AT  HULL-HOUSE       93 

Street.  I  was  surprised  and  overjoyed  on  the  very 
first  day  of  our  search  for  quarters  to  come  upon 
the  hospitable  old  house,  the  quest  for  which  I  had 
so  recently  abandoned.  The  house  was  of  course 
rented,  the  lower  part  of  It  used  for  offices  and 
storerooms  In  connection  with  a  factory  that  stood 
back  of  it.  However,  after  some  difficulties  were 
overcome,  it  proved  to  be  possible  to  sublet  the 
second  floor  and  what  had  been  the  large  drawing- 
room  on  the  first  floor. 

The  house  had  passed  through  many  changes 
since  it  had  been  built  In  1856  for  the  homestead  of 
one  of  Chicago's  pioneer  citizens,  Mr.  Charles  J. 
Hull,  and  although  battered  by  its  vicissitudes,  was 
essentially  sound.  Before  It  had  been  occupied  by 
the  factory,  it  had  sheltered  a  second-hand  furni- 
ture store,  and  at  one  time  the  Little  Sisters  of  the 
Poor  had  used  it  for  a  home  for  the  aged.  It  had 
a  half-skeptical  reputation  for  a  haunted  attic, 
so  far  respected  by  the  tenants  living  on  the  second 
floor  that  they  always  kept  a  large  pitcher  full  of 
water  on  the  attic  stairs.  Their  explanation  of 
this  custom  was  so  incoherent  that  I  was  sure  it 
was  a  survival  of  the  belief  that  a  ghost  could  not 
cross  running  water,  but  perhaps  that  interpre- 
tation was  only  my  eagerness  for  finding  folklore. 

The  fine  old  house  responded  kindly  to  repairs, 
its  wide  hall  and  open  fireplaces  always  insuring 
It  a  gracious  aspect.  Its  generous  owner.  Miss 
Helen  Culver,  In  the  following  spring  gave  us  a  free 


94    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

leasehold  of  the  entire  house.  Her  kindness  has 
continued  through  the  years  until  the  group  of 
thirteen  buildings,  which  at  present  comprises  our 
equipment,  is  built  largely  upon  land  which  Miss 
Culver  has  put  at  the  service  of  the  Settlement 
which  bears  Mr.  Hull's  name.  In  those  days  the 
house  stood  between  an  undertaking  establish- 
ment and  a  saloon.  *' Knight,  Death,  and  the 
Devil,"  the  three  were  called  by  a  Chicago  wit, 
and  yet  any  mock  heroics  which  might  be  implied 
by  comparing  the  Settlement  to  a  knight  quickly 
dropped  away  under  the  genuine  kindness  and 
hearty  welcome  extended  to  us  by  the  families 
living  up  and  down  the  street. 

We  furnished  the  house  as  we  would  have  fur- 
nished it  were  it  in  another  part  of  the  city,  with 
the  photographs  and  other  impedimenta  we  had 
collected  in  Europe,  and  with  a  few  bits  of  family 
mahogany.  While  all  the  new  furniture  which 
was  bought  was  enduring  in  quality,  we  were  care- 
ful to  keep  it  in  character  with  the  fine  old  residence. 
Probably  no  young  matron  ever  placed  her  own 
things  in  her  own  house  with  more  pleasure  than 
that  with  which  we  first  furnished  Hull-House. 
We  believed  that  the  Settlement  may  logically 
bring  to  its  aid  all  those  adjuncts  which  the  culti- 
vated man  regards  as  good  and  suggestive  of  the 
best  life  of  the  past. 

.  On  the  1 8th  of  September,  1889,  Miss  Starr  and 
I  moved  into  it,  with  Miss  Mary  Reyser,  who  be- 


FIRST  DAYS  AT  HULL-HOUSE       95 


gan  by  performing  the  housework,  but  who  quickly- 
developed  into  a  very  important  factor  in  the  life 


,   ^tm 


^^'<Ul-f.  _H 


f#*ff!7f&— 


tym^m 


of  the  vicinity  as  well  as  in  that  of  the  household, 
and  whose  death  five  years  later  was  most  sincerely 
mourned  by  hundreds  of  our  neighbors.  In  our 
enthusiasm  over  "settling,"  the  first  night  we  for- 
got not  only  to  lock  but  to  close  a  side  door  opening 


96    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

on  Polk  Street,  and  were  much  pleased  in  the 
morning  to  find  that  we  possessed  a  fine  illustra- 
tion of  the  honesty  and  kindliness  of  our  new 
neighbors. 

Our  first  guest  was  an  interesting  young  woman 
who  lived  in  a  neighboring  tenement,  whose 
widowed  mother  aided  her  in  the  support  of  the 
family  by  scrubbing  a  downtown  theater  every 
night.  The  mother,  of  English  birth,  was  well 
bred  and  carefully  educated,  but  was  in  the  midst 
of  that  bitter  struggle  which  awaits  so  many 
strangers  in  American  cities  who  find  that  their 
social  position  tends  to  be  measured  solely  by  the 
standards  of  living  they  are  able  to  maintain. 
Our  guest  has  long  since  married  the  struggling 
young  lawyer  to  whom  she  was  then  engaged,  and 
he  is  now  leading  his  profession  in  an  eastern 
city.  She  recalls  that  month's  experience  always 
with  a  sense  of  amusement  over  the  fact  that  the 
succession  of  visitors  who  came  to  see  the  new 
Settlement  invariably  questioned  her  most  mi- 
utely  concerning  "these  people"  without  once 
suspecting  that  they  were  talking  to  one  who  had 
been  identified  with  the  neighborhood  from  child- 
hood. I  at  least  was  able  to  draw  a  lesson  from  the 
incident,  and  I  never  addressed  a  Chicago  audience 
on  the  subject  of  the  Settlement  and  its  vicinity 
without  inviting  a  neighbor  to  go  with  me,  that 
I  might  curb  any  hasty  generalization  by  the  con- 
sciousness that  I  had  an  auditor  who  knew  the 


FIRST  DAYS   AT  HULL-HOUSE       97 

conditions  more  intimately  than  I  could  hope  to 
do. 

Halsted  Street  has  grown  so  familiar  during 
twenty  years  of  residence,  that  it  is  difficult  to  re- 
call its  gradual  changes,  —  the  withdrawal  of  the 
more  prosperous  Irish  and  Germans,  and  the  slow 
substitution  of  Russian  Jews,  Italians,  and  Greeks. 
A  description  of  the  street  such  as  I  gave  in  those 
early  addresses  still  stands  in  my  mind  as  sym- 
pathetic and  correct. 


Halsted  Street  is  thirty-two  miles  long,  and  one  of 
the  great  thoroughfares  of  Chicago;  Polk  Street  crosses 
it  midway  between  the  stockyards  to  the  south  and  the 
ship-building  yards  on  the  north  branch  of  the  Chicago 
River.  For  the  six  miles  between  these  two  industries 
the  street  is  lined  with  shops  of  butchers  and  grocers, 
with  dingy  and  gorgeous  saloons,  and  pretentious  estab- 
lishments for  the  sale  of  ready-made  clothing.  Polk 
Street,  running  west  from  Halsted  Street,  grows  rapidly 
more  prosperous ;  running  a  mile  east  to  State  Street, 
it  grows  steadily  worse,  and  crosses  a  network  of  vice 


98    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

on  the  corners  of  Clark  Street  and  Fifth  Avenue.  Hull- 
House  once  stood  in  the  suburbs,  but  the  city  has 
steadily  grown  up  around  it  and  its  site  now  has  corners 
on  three  or  four  foreign  colonies.  Between  Halsted 
Street  and  the  river  live  about  ten  thousand  Italians  — • 
Neapolitans,  Sicilians,  and  Calabrians,  with  an  occa- 
sional Lombard  or  Venetian.  To  the  south  on  Twelfth 
Street  are  many  Germans,  and  side  streets  are  given 
over  almost  entirely  to  Polish  and  Russian  Jews.  Still 
farther  south,  these  Jewish  colonies  merge  into  a  huge 
Bohemian  colony,  so  vast  that  Chicago  ranks  as  the 
third  Bohemian  city  in  the  world.  To  the  northwest 
are  many  Canadian-French,  clannish  in  spite  of  their 
long  residence  in  America,  and  to  the  north  are  Irish 
and  first-generation  Americans.  On  the  streets  directly 
west  and  farther  north  are  well-to-do  English-speaking 
families,  many  of  whom  own  their  houses  and  have  lived 
in  the  neighborhood  for  years ;  one  man  is  still  living 
in  his  old  farmhouse. 

/''    The  policy  of  the  public  authorities  of  never  taking 
(  an  initiative,  and  always  waiting  to  be  urged  to  do  their 
duty,  is  obviously  fatal  in  a  neighborhood  where  there 
is  little  initiative  among  the  citizens.      The  idea  under- 
lying our  self-government  breaks  down  in  such  a  ward. 
/  The   streets    are   inexpressibly    dirty,    the    number    of 
1  schools  inadequate,  sanitary  legislation  unenforced,  the 
street  lighting  bad,  the  paving  miserable  and  altogether 
lacking    in    the    alleys    and    smaller    streets,    and    the 
stables  foul  beyond  description.     Hundreds  of  houses 
are  unconnected  with  the  street  sewer.     The  older  and 
richer    inhabitants    seem    anxious    to    move    away    as 
rapidly  as  they  can  afford  it.      They  make  room  for 
newly  arrived  immigrants  who  are  densely  ignorant  of 


FIRST  DAYS   AT  HULL-HOUSE       99 

civic  duties.  This  substitution  of  the  older  inhabit- 
ants is  accompUshed  industrially  also,  in  the  south  and 
east  quarters  of  the  ward.  The  Jews  and  Italians 
do  the  finishing  for  the  great  clothing  manufacturers, 
formerly  done  by  Americans,  Irish  and  Germans,  who 
refused  to  submit  to  the  extremely  low  prices  to  which 
the  sweating  system  has  reduced  their  successors.  As 
the  design  of  the  sweating  system  is  the  elimination  of 
rent  from  the  manufacture  of  clothing,  the  "outside 
work"  is  begun  after  the  clothing  leaves  the  cutter. 
An  unscrupulous  contractor  regards  no  basement  as 
too  dark,  no  stable  loft  too  foul,  no  rear  shanty  too 
provisional,  no  tenement  room  too  small  for  his  work- 
room, as  these  conditions  imply  low  rental.  Hence 
these  shops  abound  in  the  worst  of  the  foreign  districts 
where  the  sweater  easily  finds  his  cheap  basement  and 
his  home  finishers. 

The  houses  of  the  ward,  for  the  most  part  wooden, 
were  originally  built  for  one  family  and  are  now  occupied^ 
by  several.  They  are  after  the  type  of  the  inconvenient 
frame  cottages  found  in  the  poorer  suburbs  twenty 
years  ago.  Many  of  them  were  built  where  they  now 
stand ;  others  were  brought  thither  on  rollers,  because 
their  previous  sites  had  been  taken  for  factories.  The 
fewer  brick  tenement  buildings  which  are  three  or  four 
stories  high  are  comparatively  new,  and  there  are  few 
large  tenements.  The  little  wooden  houses  have  a 
temporary  aspect,  and  for  this  reason,  perhaps,  the 
tenement-house  legislation  in  Chicago  is  totally  inade- 
quate. Rear  tenements  flourish ;  many  houses  have 
no  water  supply  save  the  faucet  in  the  back  yard,  there 
are  no  fire  escapes,  the  garbage  and  ashes  are  placed  in 
wooden  boxes  which  are  fastened  to  the  street  pave- 


loo    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

!  ments.  One  of  the  most  discouraging  features  about  the 
j  present  system  of  tenement  houses  is  that  many  are 
owned  by  sordid  and  ignorant  immigrants.  The  theory 
that  wealth  brings  responsibiHty,  that  possession  en- 
tails at  length  education  and  refinement,  in  these  cases 
fails  utterly.  The  children  of  an  Italian  immigrant 
owner  may  "shine"  shoes  in  the  street,  and  his  wife 
may  pick  rags  from  the  street  gutter,  laboriously  sorting 
them  in  a  dingy  court.  Wealth  may  do  something  for 
her  self-complacency  and  feeling  of  consequence;  it 
certainly  does  nothing  for  her  comfort  or  her  children's 
improvement  nor  for  the  cleanliness  of  any  one  con- 
cerned. Another  thing  that  prevents  better  houses  in 
Chicago  is  the  tentative  attitude  of  the  real  estate  men. 
Many  unsavory  conditions  are  allowed  to  continue  which 
would  be  regarded  with  horror  if  they  were  considered 
permanent.  Meanwhile,  the  wretched  conditions  persist 
until  at  least  two  generations  of  children  have  been  born 
and  reared  in  them. 

In    every    neighborhood    where    poorer    people    live, 

because  rents  are  supposed  to  be  cheaper  there,  is  an 
element  which,  although  uncertain  in  the  individual,  in 
the  aggregate  can  be  counted  upon.  It  is  composed  of 
people  of  former  education  and  opportunity  who  have 
cherished  ambitions  and  prospects,  but  who  are  carica- 
tures of  what  they  meant  to  be  — "hollow  ghosts  which 
blame  the  living  men."  There  are  times  in  many 
lives  when  there  is  a  cessation  of  energy  and  loss  of 
power.  Men  and  women  of  education  and  refinement 
come  to  live  in  a  cheaper  neighborhood  because  they 
lack  the  ability  to  make  money,  because  of  ill  health, 
because  of  an  unfortunate  marriage,  or  for  other  reasons 
which  do  not  imply  criminality  or  stupidity.      Among 


FIRST  DAYS  AT  HULL-H  io3 

O 

them  are  those  who,  in  spite  of  untoward  cii  ^ 

keep  up  some  sort  of  an  intellectual  life  ;  th 
"great  for  books,"  as  their  neighbors  say. 
the  Settlement  may  be  a  genuine  refuge. 

In  the  very  first  weeks  of  our  residence  Miss 
Starr  started  a  reading  party  in  George  Eliot's 
''Romola,"  which  was  attended  by  a  group  of 
young  women  who  followed  the  wonderful  tale  with 
unflagging  interest.  The  weekly  reading  was  held 
in  our  little  upstairs  dining  room,  and  two  members 
of  the  club  came  to  dinner  each  week,  not  only 
that  they  might  be  received  as  guests,  but  that  they 
might  help  us  wash  the  dishes  afterwards  and  so 
make  the  table  ready  for  the  stacks  of  Florentine 
photographs. 

Our  ''first  .resident,"  as  she  gayly  designated 
herself,  wa?  a  charming  old  lady  who  gave  five 
consecutive  readings  from  Hawthorne  to  a  most 
appreciative*  audience,  interspersing  the  magic 
tales  most  delightfully  with  recollections  of  the 
elusive  and  fascinating  author.  Years  before  she 
had  lived  at  Brook  Farm  as  a  pupil  of  the  Ripleys, 
and  she  came  to  us  for  ten  days  because  she  wished 
to  live  once  more  in  an  atmosphere  where  ''idealism 
ran  high."  We  thus  early  found  the  type  of  class 
which  through  all  the  years  has  remained  most 
popular  —  a  combination  of  a  social  atmosphere 
with  serious  study. 

Volunteers  to  the  new  undertaking  came  quickly  ; 
a  charming  young  girl  conducted  a  kindergarten- 


IOC    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

'^in  the  drawing-room,  coming  regularly  every  morn- 
ing from  her  home  in  a  distant  part  of  the  North 
Side  of  the  city.  Although  a  tablet  to  her  memory 
has  stood  upon  a  mantel  shelf  in  Hull-House  for 
five  years,  we  still  associate  her  most  vividly  with 
the  play  of  little  children,  first  in  her  kindergarten 
and  then  in  her  own  nursery,  which  furnished  a 
veritable  illustration  of  Victor  Hugo's  definition  of 
heaven,  —  ''a  place  where  parents  are  always 
young  and  children  always  little."  Her  daily 
presence  for  the  first  two  years  made  it  quite  impos- 
sible for  us  to  become  too  solemn  and  self-conscious 
in  our  strenuous  routine,  for  her  mirth  and  buoy- 
ancy were  irresistible  and  her  eager  desire  to  share 
the  life  of  the  neighborhood  never  failed,  although 
it  was  often  put  to  a  severe  test.  One  day  at  lunch- 
eon she  gayly  recited  her  futile  attempt  to  impress 
temperance  principles  upon  the  mind  of  an  Italian 
mother,  to  whom  she  had  returned  a  small  daughter 
of  five  sent  to  the  kindergarten  "in  quite  a  horrid 
state  of  intoxication"  from  the  wine-soaked  bread 
upon  which  she  had  breakfasted.  The  mother, 
with  the  gentle  courtesy  of  a  South  Italian,  listened 
politely  to  her  graphic  portrayal  of  the  untimely 
end  awaiting  so  immature  a  wine  bibber ;  but 
long  before  the  lecture  was  finished,  quite  uncon- 
scious of  the  incongruity,  she  hospitably  set  forth 
her  best  wines,  and  when  her  baffled  guest  refused 
one  after  the  other,  she  disappeared,  only  to  quickly 
return  with   a  small  dark  glass  of  whisky,  saying 


FIRST  DAYS   AT  HULL-HOUSE      103 

reassuringly,  "See,  I  have  brought  you  the  true 
American  drink."  The  recital  ended  in  seriocomic 
despair,  with  the  rueful  statement  that  "the  im- 
pression I  probably  made  upon  her  darkened  mind 
was,  that  it  is  the  American  custom  to  breakfast 
children  on  bread  soaked  in  whisky  instead  of 
light  Italian  wine." 

That  first  kindergarten  was  a  constant  source  of 
education  to  us.  We  were  much  surprised  to  find 
social  distinctions  even  among  its  lambs,  although 
greatly  amused  with  the  neat  formulation  made 
by  the  superior  little  Italian  boy  who  refused  to 
sit  beside  uncouth  little  Angelina  because  "we  eat. 
our  macaroni  this  way,"  —  imitating  the  movement 
of  a  fork  from  a  plate  to  his  mouth,  —  "and  she 
eat  her  macaroni  this  way,"  holding  his  hand 
high  in  the  air  and  throwing  back  his  head,  that 
his  wide-open  mouth  might  receive  an  imaginary 
cascade.  Angelina  gravely  nodded  her  little  head 
in  approval  of  this  distinction  between  gentry  and 
peasant.  "But  isn't  it  astonishing  that  merely 
table  manners  are  made  such  a  test  all  the  way 
along?"  was  the  comment  of  their  democratic 
teacher.  Another  memory  which  refuses  to  be 
associated  with  death,  which  came  to  her  all  too 
soon,  is  that  of  the  young  girl  who  organized  our 
first  really  successful  club  of  boys,  holding  their 
fascinated  interest  by  the  old  chivalric  tales,  set 
forth  so  dramatically  and  vividly  that  checkers  and 
jackstraws  were  abandoned  by  all  the  other  clubs 


I04    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 


on  Boys'  Day,  that  their  members  might  form  a 
listening  fringe  to  "  The  Young  Heroes." 

I  met  a  member 
of  the  latter  club 
one  day  as  he  flung 
himself  out  of  the 
House  in  the  rage 
by  which  an  emo- 
tional boy  hopes  to 
keep  from  shedding 
tears.  "There  is 
no  use  coming  here 
any  more,  Prince 
Roland  is  dead,"  he 
gruflly  explained  as 
we  passed.  We 
encouraged  the 
younger  boys  in 
tournaments  and 
*■'  ''     /■p  dramatics     of     all 

.       <*  sorts,  and  we  some- 

what fatuously  be- 
lieved that  boys  who  were  early  interested  in 
adventurers  or  explorers  might  later  want  to  know 
the  lives  of  living  statesmen  and  inventors.  It  is 
needless  to  add  that  the  boys  quickly  responded  to 
such  a  program,  and  that  the  only  difficulty  lay 
in  finding  leaders  who  were  able  to  carry  it  out. 
This  difficulty  has  been  with  us  through  all  the 
years  of  growth  and  development  in  the  Boys'  Club 


FIRST   DAYS  AT  HULL-HOUSE      105 


until  now,  with  its  five-story  building,  its  splendid 
equipment  of  shops,  of  recreation  and  study 
rooms,  that  group  alone  is  successful  which  com- 
mands the  services  of  a  resourceful  and  devoted 
leader. 

The  dozens  of  younger 
children  who  from  the  first 
came  to  Hull-House  were 
organized  into  groups  which 
were  not  quite  classes  and 
not  quite  clubs.  The  value  ,„ 
of  these  groups  consisted 
almost  entirely  in  arousing 
a  higher  imagination  and 
in  giving  the  children  the 
opportunity  which  they 
could  not  have  in  the 
crowded  schools,  for  initia- 
:ve  and  for  independent 
social  relationships.  The  public  schools  then  con- 
tained little  hand  work  of  any  sort,  so  that  naturally 
any  instruction  which  we  provided  for  the  children 
took  the  direction  of  this  supplementary  work. 
But  it  required  a  constant  effort  that  the  pressure 
of  poverty  itself  should  not  defeat  the  educational 
aim.  The  Italian  girls  in  the  sewing  classes  would 
count  that  day  lost  when  they  could  not  carry 
home  a  garment,  and  the  insistence  that  it  should 
be  neatly  made  seemed  a  super-refinement  to  those 
in  dire  need  of  clothing. 


io6    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

As  these  clubs  have  been  continued  during  the 
twenty  years  they  have  developed  classes  in  the 
many  forms  of  handicraft  which  the  newer  educa- 
tion is  so  rapidly  adapting  for  the  delight  of  chil- 
dren ;  but  they  still  keep  their  essentially  social 
character  and  still  minister  to  that  large  number 
of  children  who  leave  school  the  very  week  they 
are  fourteen  years  old,  only  too  eager  to  close  the 
schoolroom  door  forever  on  a  tiresome  task  that  is 
at  last  well  over.  It  seems  to  us  important  that 
these  children  shall  find  themselves  permanently 
attached  to  a  House  that  offers  them  evening  clubs 
and  classes  with  their  old  companions,  that  merges 
as  easily  as  possible  the  school  life  into  the  working 
life  and  does  what  it  can  to  find  places  for  the 
bewildered  young  things  looking  for  work.  A  large 
proportion  of  the  delinquent  boys  brought  into  the 
juvenile  court  in  Chicago  are  the  oldest  sons  in  large 
families  whose  wages  are  needed  at  home.  The 
grades  from  which  many  of  them  leave  school,  as 
the  records  show,  are  piteously  far  from  the  seventh 
and  eighth  where  the  very  first  instruction  in  man- 
ual training  is  given,  nor  have  they  been  caught  by 
any  other  abiding  interest. 

In  spite  of  these  flourishing  clubs  for  children 
early  established  at  Hull-House,  and  the  fact  that 
our  first  organized  undertaking  was  a  kinder- 
garten, we  were  very  insistent  that  the  Settle- 
ment should  not  be  primarily  for  the  children,  and 
that  it  was  absurd  to  suppose  that  grown  people 


FIRST   DAYS   AT  HULL-HOUSE      107 

would  not  respond  to  opportunities  for  education 
and  social  life.  Our  enthusiastic  kindergartner^ 
herself  demonstrated  this  with  an  old  woman  of 
ninety,  who,  because  she  was  left  alone  all  day  while 
her  daughter  cooked  in  a  restaurant,  had  formed 
such  a  persistent  habit  of  picking  the  plaster  off 
the  walls  that  one  landlord  after  another  refused 
to  have  her  for  a  tenant.  It  required  but  a  few 
weeks'  time  to  teach  her  to  make  large  paper  chains, 
and  gradually  she  was  content  to  do  it  all  day  long, 
and  in  the  end  took  quite  as  much  pleasure  in 
adorning  the  walls  as  she  had  formerly  taken  in 
demolishing  them.  Fortunately  the  landlord  had 
never  heard  the  aesthetic  principle  that  the  expo- 
sure of  basic  construction  is  more  desirable  than 
gaudy  decoration.  In  course  of  time  it  was  dis- 
covered that  the  old  woman  could  speak  Gaelic, 
and  when  one  or  two  grave  professors  came  to  see 
her,  the  neighborhood  was  filled  with  pride  that 
such  a  wonder  lived  in  their  midst.  To  mitigate 
life  for  a  woman  of  ninety  was  an  unfailing  refu- 
tation of  the  statement  that  the  Settlement  was 
designed  for  the  young. 

On  our  first  New  Year's  Day  at  Hull-House  we 
invited  the  older  people  in  the  vicinity,  sending  a 
carriage  for  the  most  feeble  and  announcing  to  all 
of  them  that  we  were  going  to  organize  an  Old 
Settlers'  Party. 

Every  New  Year's  Day  since,  older  people  in 
varying  numbers   have    come    together    at    Hull- 


io8    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

House  to  relate  early  hardships,  and  to  take  for  the 
moment  the  place  in  the  community  to  which  their 
pioneer  life  entitles  them.  Many  people  who  were 
formerly  residents  of  the  vicinity,  but  whom  pros- 
perity has  carried  into  more  desirable  neighbor- 
hoods, come  back  to  these  meetings  and  often  con- 
fess to  each  other  that  they  have  never  since  found 
such  kindness  as  in  early  Chicago  when  all  its  citi- 
zens came  together  in  mutual  enterprises.  Many 
of  these  pioneers,  so  like  the  men  and  women  of  my 
earliest  childhood  that  I  always  felt  comforted  by 
their  presence  in  the  house,  were  very  much  opposed 
to  "foreigners,"  whom  they  held  responsible  for  a 
depreciation  of  property  and  a  general  lowering  of 
the  tone  of  the  neighborhood.  Sometimes  we  had 
a  chance  for  championship ;  I  recall  one  old  man, 
fiercely  American,  who  had  reproached  me  because 
we  had  so  many  '^foreign  views"  on  our  walls,  to 
whom  I  endeavored  to  set  forth  our  hope  that  the 
pictures  might  afford  a  familiar  island  to  the  immi- 
grants in  a  sea  of  new  and  strange  impressions.  The 
old  settler  guest,  taken  off  his  guard,  replied,  "I 
see ;  they  feel  as  we  did  when  we  saw  a  Yankee 
notion  from  down  East,"  —  thereby  formulating  the 
dim  kinship  between  the  pioneer  and  the  immigrant, 
both  "buifeting  the  waves  of  a  new  development." 
The  older  settlers  as  well  as  their  children  through- 
out the  years  have  given  genuine  help  to  our  vari- 
ous enterprises  for  neighborhood  improvement,  and 
from  their  own  memories  of  earlier  hardships  have 


FIRST  DAYS  AT  HULL-HOUSE      109 

made  many  shrewd  suggestions  for  alleviating  the 
difficulties  of  that  first  sharp  struggle  with  un- 
toward conditions. 

In  those  early  days  we  were  often  asked  why  we 
had  come  to  live  on  Halsted  Street  when  we  could 
afford  to  live  somewhere  else.  I  remember  one 
man  who  used  to  shake  his  head  and  say  it  was 
"the  strangest  thing  he  had  met  in  his  experience," 
but  who  was  finally  convinced  that  it  was  "not 
strange  but  natural."  In  time  it  came  to  seem 
natural  to  all  of  us  that  the  Settlement  should  be 
there.  If  it  is  natural  to  feed  the  hungry  and  care  | 
for  the  sick,  it  is  certainly  natural  to  give  pleasure 
to  the  young,  comfort  to  the  aged,  and  to  minister 
to  the  deep-seated_  craying_for_social  Intercourse 
that  all  men  feel.j  Whoever  does  iTlFrewarded  by 
something  which,  if  not  gratitude,  is  at  least  spon- 
taneous and  vital  and  lacks  that  Irksome  sense  of 
obligation  with  which  a  substantial  benefit  is  too 
often  acknowledged. 

In  addition  to  the  neighbors  who  responded  to 
the  receptions  and  classes,  we  found  those  who  were 
too  battered  and  oppressed  to  care  for  them.  To 
these,  however,  was  left  that  susceptibility  to  the 
bare  offices  of  humanity  which  raises  such  offices 
Into  a  bond  of  fellowship. 

From  the  first  it  seemed  understood  that  we  were^ 
ready  to  perform  the  humblest  neighborhood  serv-    \ 
ices.     We  were  asked  to  wash  the  new-born  babies,     I 
and  to  prepare  the  dead  for  burial,  to  nurse  the    / 
sick,  and  to  "mind  the  children."  ^^ 


no    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

Occasionally  these  neighborly  offices  unexpect- 
edly uncovered  ugly  human  traits.  For  six  weeks 
after  an  operation  we  kept  in  one  of  our  three 
bedrooms  a  forlorn  little  baby  who,  because  he  was 
born  with  a  cleft  palate,  was  most  unwelcome  even 
to  his  mother,  and  we  were  horrified  when  he  died 
of  neglect  a  week  after  he  was  returned  to  his  home  ; 
a  little  Italian  bride  of  fifteen  sought  shelter  with 
us  one  November  evening,  to  escape  her  husband 
who  had  beaten  her  every  night  for  a  week  when  he 
returned  home  from  work,  because  she  had  lost 
her  wedding  ring ;  two  of  us  officiated  quite  alone 
at  the  birth  of  an  illegitimate  child  because  the 
doctor  was  late  in  arriving,  and  none  of  the  honest 
Irish  matrons  would  ''touch  the  likes  of  her"; 
we  ministered  at  the  deathbed  of  a  young  man, 
who  during  a  long  illness  of  tuberculosis  had  received 
so  many  bottles  of  whisky  through  the  mistaken 
kindness  of  his  friends,  that  the  cumulative  effect 
produced  wild  periods  of  exultation,  in  one  of  which 
he  died. 

—"We  were  also  early  impressed  with  the  curious 
isolation  of  many  of  the  immigrants ;  an  Italian 
woman  once  expressed  her  pleasure  in  the  red  roses 
that  she  saw  at  one  of  our  receptions  In  surprise 
that  they  had  been  "brought  so  fresh  all  the  way 
from  Italy."  She  would  not  believe  for  an  Instant 
that  they  had  been  grown  In  America.  She  said 
that  she  had  lived  in  Chicago  for  six  years  and  had 
never  seen  any  roses,  whereas  in  Italy  she  had  seen 


FIRST   DAYS   AT  HULL-HOUSE      i 


them  every  summer  in  great  profusion.     During 
all  that  time,  of  course,  the  woman  had  lived  within 
ten  blocks  of  a  florist's  window ;   she  had  not  been 
more  than  a  five- 
cent  car  ride  away 
from     the     public 
parks  ;  but  she  had 
never   dreamed  of 
faring  forth  for  her- 
self, and  noonehad 
taken     her.      Her 
conception   of 
America  had  been 
the    untidy    street 
in  which  she  lived 
and  had  made  her 
long     struggle     to 
adapt    herself     to 
American  ways.  ^ 

But  in  spite  of  some  untoward  experiences,^  we 
were  constantly  impressed  with  the  uniform  kind- 
ness and  courtesy  we  received.  Perhaps  these  first 
days  laid  the  simple  human  foundations  which  are 
certainly  essential  for  continuous  living  among  the 
poor  :  first,  genuine  preference  for  residence  in  an 
industrial  quarter  to  any  other  part  of  the  city, 
because  it  is  interesting  and  makes  the  human 
appeal ;  and  second,  the  conviction,  in  the  words 
of  Canon  Barnett,  that  the  things  which  make  men 
alike  are  finer  and  better  than  the  things  that  keep 


112    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

them  apart,  and  that  these  basic  likenesses,  if  they 
are  properly  accentuated,  easily  transcend  the  less 
essential  differences  of  race,  language,  creed  and 
tradition. 

Perhaps  even  in  those  first  days  we  made  a 
beginning  toward  that  object  which  was  afterwards 
stated  in  our  charter:  ''To  provide  a  center  for 
a  higher  civic  and  social  life ;  to  institute  and 
maintain  educational  and  philanthropic  enterprises, 
and  to  investigate  and  improve  the  conditions  in 
the  industrial  districts  of  Chicago." 


CHAPTER  VI 

Subjective  Necessity  for  Social  Settlements 

The  Ethical  Culture  Societies  held  a  summer 
school  at  Plymouth,  Massachusetts,  in  1892,  to 
which  they  invited  several  people  representing 
the  then  new  Settlement  movement,  that  they 
might  discuss  with  others  the  general  theme  of 
Philanthropy  and  Social  Progress. 

I  venture  to  produce  here  parts  of  a  lecture  I 
delivered  in  Plymouth,  both  because  I  have  found 
it  impossible  to  formulate  with  the  same  freshness 
those  early  motives  and  strivings,  and  because, 
when  published  with  other  papers  given  that 
summer,  it  was  received  by  the^  Settlement  people 
themselves  as  a  satisfactory  statement. 

I  remember  one  golden  summer  afternoon  dur- 
ing the  sessions  of  the  summer  school  that  several 
of  us  met  on  the  shores  of  a  pond  in  a  pine  wood 
a  few  miles  from  Plymouth,  to  discuss  our  new 
movement.  The  natural  leader  of  the  group  was 
Robert  A.  Woods.  He  had  recently  returned  from 
a  residence  in  Toynbee  Hall,  London,  to  open 
Andover  House  in  Boston,  and  had  just  issued  a 
book,  '*  English  Social  Movements,"  in  which  he 
had  gathered  together  and  focused  the  many 
I  113 


114    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


forms  of  social  endeavor  preceding  and  contempo- 
raneous with  the  English  Settlements.  There  were 
Miss  Vida  D.  Scudder  and  Miss  Helena  Dudley 
from  the  College  Settlement  Association,  Miss 
Julia   C.   Lathrop   and   myself    from    Hull-House. 

Some  of  us  had 
numbered  our 
years  as  far  as 
thirty,  and  we  all 
carefully  avoid- 
ed the  extrava- 
gance of  state- 
ment  which 
characterizes 
youth,  and  yet 
-  I  doubt  if  any- 
where on  the 
continent  that 
summer  could 
have  been  found 
a  group  of  people  more  genuinely  interested  in  social 
^development  or  more  sincerely  convinced  that  they 
had  found  a  clew  by  which  the  conditions  In 
crowded  cities  might  be  understood  and  the  agencies 
for  social  betterment  developed. 

We  were  all  careful  to  avoid  saying  that  we  had 
found  a  *'life  work,"  perhaps  with  an  instinctive 
dread  of  expending  all  our  energy  in  vows  of  con- 
stancy, as  so  often  happens  ;  and  yet  it  Is  interest- 
ing to  note  that  all  of  the  people  whom  I  have 


SOCIAL   SETFLEMENTS  115 

recalled  as  the  enthusiasts  at  that  little  conference, 
have  remained  attached  to  Settlements  in  actual 
residence  for  longer  or  shorter  periods  each  year 
during  the  eighteen  years  which  have  elapsed 
since  then,  although  they  have  also  been  closely 
identified  as  publicists  or  governmental  officials 
with  movements  outside.  It  is  as  if  they  had  dis- 
covered that  the  Settlement  was  too  valuable  as  a 
method  as  a  way  of  approach  to  the  social  question 
to  be  abandoned,  although  they  had  long  since 
discovered  that  it  was  not  a  *' social  movement" 
in  itself.  This,  however,  is  anticipating  the  future, 
whereas  the  following  paper  on  ^'  The  Subjective 
Necessity  for  Social  Settlements"  should  have  a 
chance  to  speak  for  itself.  It  is  perhaps  too  late 
in  the  day  to  express  regret  for  its  stilted  title. 


This  paper  is  an  attempt  to  analyze  the  motives  which 
underlie  a  movement  based,  not  only  upon  conviction,  but 
upon  genuine  emotion,  wherever  educated  young  people 
are  seeking  an  outlet  for  that  sentiment  of  universal 
brotherhood,  which  the  best  spirit  of  our  times  is  forcing 
from  an  emotion  into  a  motive.  These  young  people 
accomplish  little  toward  the  soTiIti^n  of  liTis"'"5^iar 
problem,  and  bear  the  brunt  of  being  cultivated  into  un- 
nourished,  oversensitive  lives.  They  have  been  shut  off 
from  the  common  labor  by  which  they  live  which  is  a  great 
source  of  moral  and  physical  health.  They  feel  a  fatal 
want  of  harmony  between  their  theory  and  their  lives, 
a  lack  of  coordination  between  thought  and  action. 
I  think  it  is  hard  for  us  to  realize  how  seriously  many  of 


ii6    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

them  are  taking  to  the  notion  of  human  brotherhood, 
how  eagerly  they  long  to  give  tangible  expression  to 
the  democratic  ideal.  These  young  men  and  women, 
longing  to  socialize  their  democracy,  are  animated  hy 
certain  hopes  which  may  be  thus  loosely  formulated ; 
that  if  in  a  democratic  country  nothing  can  be  perma- 
nently achieved  save  thr®ugh  the  masses  of  the  people, 
it  will  be  impossible  to  establish  a  higher  political  life 
than  the  people  themselves  crave ;  that  it  is  difficult 
to  see  how  the  notion  of  a  higher  civic  life  can  be  fos- 
tered save  through  common  intercourse  ;  that  the  bless- 
ings which  we  associate  with  a  life  of  refinement  and 
cultivation  can  be  made  universal  and  must  be  made 
universal  if  they  are  to  be  permanent ;  that  the  good  we 
secure  for  ourselves  is  precarious  and  uncertain,  Is 
floating  in  mid-air,  until  it  is  secured  for  all  of  us  and 
incorporated  into  our  common  life.  It  is  easier  to  state 
these  hopes  than  to  formulate  the  line  of  motives, 
which  I  believe  to  constitute  the  trend  of  the  subjective 
pressure  toward  the  Settlement.  There  Is  something 
primordial  about  these  motives,  but  I  am  perhaps  over- 
bold In  designating  them  as  a  great  desire  to  share  the 
race  life.  We  all  bear  traces  of  the  starvation  struggle 
which  for  so  long  made  up  the  life  of  the  race.  Our 
very  organism  holds  memories  and  glimpses  of  that 
long  life  of  our  ancestors  which  still  goes  on  among  so 
many  of  our  contemporaries.  Nothing  so  deadens 
the  sympathies  and  shrivels  the  power  of  enjoyment, 
as  the  persistent  keeping  away  from  the  great  op- 
portunities for  helpfulness  and  a  continual  ignoring 
of  the  starvation  struggle  which  makes  up  the  life  of  at 
least  half  the  race.     To  shut  one's  self  away  from  that 


SOCIAL   SETTLEMENTS  117 

half  of  the  race  life  is  to  shut  one's  self  away  from  the 
most  vital  part  of  it ;  it  is  to  live  out  but  half  the  human- 
ity to  which  we  have  been  born  heir  and  to  use  but  half 
our  faculties.  We  have  all  had  longings  for  a  fuller  life 
which  should  include  the  use  of  these  faculties.  These 
longings  are  the  physical  complement  of  the  "Intima- 
tions of  Immortality,"  ou  wJaich  no  ode  has  yet  been 
written.  To.  portray  these  would  be  the  work  of  a 
poet,  and  it  is  hazardous  for  any  but  a  poet  to  attempt 
it. 

You  may  remember  the  forlorn  feeling  which  occa- 
sionally seizes  you  when  you  r.rrive  early  in  the  morning 
a  stranger  in  a  great  city  :  the  stream  of  laboring  people 
goes  past  you  as  you  gaze  through  the  plate-glass  win- 
dow of  your  hotel ;  you  see  hard  working  men  lifting 
great  burdens ;  you  hear  the  driving  and  jostling  of 
huge  carts  and  your  heart  sinks  with  a  sudden  sense  of 
futility.  The  door  opens  behind  you  and  you  turn  to 
the  man  who  brings  you  in  your  breakfast  with  a  quick 
sense  of  human  fellowship.  You  find  yourself  praying 
that  you  may  never  lose  your  hold  on  it  all.  A  more 
poetic  prayer  would  be  that  the  great  mother  breasts 
of  our  common  humanity,  with  its  labor  and  suffering 
and  its  homely  comforts,  may  never  be  withheld  from 
you.  You  turn  helplessly  to  the  waiter  and  feel  that 
it  would  be  almost  grotesque  to  claim  from  him  the 
sympathy  you  crave  because  civilization  has  placed 
you  apart,  but  you  resent  your  position  with  a  sudden 
sense  of  snobbery.  Literature  is  full  of  portrayals  of 
these  glimpses :  they  come  to  shipwrecked  men  on 
rafts  :  they  overcome  the  differences  of  an  incongruous 
multitude  when  in  the  presence  of  a  great   danger  or 


xi8    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

when  moved  by  a  common  enthusiasm.  They  are  not, 
however,  confined  to  such  moments,  and  if  we  were 
in  the  habit  of  telling  them  to  each  other,  the  recital 
would  be  as  long  as  the  tales  of  children  are,  when  they 
sit  down  on  the  green  grass  and  confide  to  each  other 
how  many  times  they  have  remembered  that  they  lived 
once  before.  If  these  childish  tales  are  the  stirring  of 
inherited  impressions,  just  so  surely  is  the  other  the 
striving  of  inherited  powers. 

"It  is  true  that  there  is  nothing  after  disease,  indi- 
gence and  a  sense  of  guilt,  so  fatal  to  health  and  to  life 
itself  as  the  want  of  a  proper  outlet  for  active  faculties." 
I  have  seen  young  girls  suffer  and  grow  sensibly  lowered 
in  vitality  in  the  first  years  after  they  leave  school. 
In  our  attempt  then  to  give  a  girl  pleasure  and  freedom 
from  care  we  succeed,  for  the  most  part,  in  making  her 
pitifully  miserable.  She  finds  ''life"  so  different  from 
what  she  expected  it  to  be.  She  is  besotted  with  inno- 
cent little  ambitions,  and  does  not  understand  this 
apparent  waste  of  herself,  this  elaborate  preparation, 
if  no  work  is  provided  for  her.  There  is  a  heritage  of 
noble  obligation  which  young  people  accept  and  long 
to  perpetuate.  The  desire  for  action,  the  wish  to  right 
wrong  and .  alleviate  suffering  haunts  them  daily. 
Society  smiles  at  it  ijidulgently  instead  of  making  it  of 
value  to  itself.  The  wrong  to  them  begins  even  farther 
back,  when  we  restrain  the  first  childish  desires  for  "do- 
ing good"  and  tell  them  that  they  must  wait  until  they 
are  older  and  better  fitted.  We  Intimate  that  social 
obligation  begins  at  a  fixed  date,  forgetting  that  it 
begins  with  birth  itself.  We  treat  them  as  children  who, 
with  strong-growing  limbs,  are  allowed  to  use  their  legs 


SOCIAL   SETTLEMENTS  119 

but  not  their  arms,  or  whose  legs  are  daily  carefully 
exercised  that  after  a  while  their  arms  may  be  put  to 
high  use.  We  do  this  in  spite  of  the  protest  of  the  best 
educators,  Locke  and  Pestalozzi.  We  are  fortunate 
in  the  meantime  if  their  unused  members  do  not  weaken 
and  disappear.  They  do  sometimes.  There  are  a 
few  girls  who,  by  the  time  they  are  "educated,"  forget 
their  old  childish  desires  to  help  the  world  and  to  play 
with  poor  little  girls  "who  haven't  playthings."  Par- 
ents are  often  inconsistent :  they  deliberately  expose 
their  daughters  to  knowledge  of  the  distress  in  the  world  ; 
they  send  them  to  hear  missionary  addresses  on  famines 
in  India  and  China ;  they  accompany  them  to  lectures 
on  the  suffering  In  Siberia ;  they  agitate  together  over 
the  forgotten  region  of  East  London.  In  addition  to 
this,  from  babyhood  the  altruistic  tendencies  of  these 
daughters  are  persistently  cultivated.  They  are  taught 
to  be  self-forgetting  and  self-sacrificing,  to  consider  the 
good  of  the  whole  before  the  good  of  the  ego.  But 
when  all  this  information  and  culture  show  results,  when 
the  daughter  comes  back  from  college  and  begins  to 
recognize  her  social  claim  to  the  "submerged  tenth," 
and  to  evince  a  disposition 'to  fulfill  it,  the  family  claim 
is  strenuously  asserted  ;  she  Is  told  that  she  Is  unjus- 
tified, Ill-advised  In  her  efforts.  If  she  persists,  the 
family  too  often  are  injured  and  unhappy  unless  the 
efforts  are  called  missionary  and  the  religious  zeal 
of  the  family  carry  them  over  their  sense  of  abuse. 
When  this  zeal  does  not  exist,  the  result  is  perplexing. 
It  is  a  curious  violation  of  what  we  would  fain  believe  a 
fundamental  law  —  that  the  final  return  of  the  deed  Is 
upon  the  head  of  the  doer.     The  deed  Is  that  of  exclu- 


I20    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

siveness  and  caution,  but  the  return,  instead  of  falling 
upon  the  head  of  the  exclusive  and  cautious,  falls  upon 
a  young  head  full  of  generous  and  unselfish  plans. 
The  girl  loses  something  vital  out  of  her  life  to  which 
she  is  entitled.  She  is  restricted  and  unhappy;  her 
elders,  meanwhile,  are  unconscious  of  the  situation 
and  we  have  all   the  elements  of  a  tragedy. 

We  have  in  America  a  fast-growing  number  of  culti- 
vated young  people  who  have  no  recognized  outlet  for 
their  active  faculties.  They  hear  constantly  of  the 
great  social  maladjustment,  but  no  way  is  provided 
for  them  to  change  it,  and  their  uselessness  hangs  about 
them  heavily.  Huxley  declares  that  the  sense  of  use- 
lessness is  the  severest  shock  which  the  human  system 
can  sustain,  and  that  if  persistently  sustained,  it  results 
in  atrophy  of  function.  These  young  people  have  had 
advantages  of  college,  of  European  travel,  and  of  eco- 
nomic study,  but  they  are  sustaining  this  shock  of  inac- 
tion. They  have  pet  phrases,  and  they  tell  you  that  the 
things  that  make  us  all  alike  are  stronger  than  the  things 
that  make  us  different.  They  say  that  all  men  are 
united  by  needs  and  sympathies  far  more  permanent 
and  radical  than  anything  that  temporarily  divides 
them  and  sets  them  in  opposition  to  each  other.  If  they 
affect  art,  they  say  that  the  decay  in  artistic  expression 
is  due  to  the  decay  in  ethics,  that  art  when  shut  away 
from  the  human  interests  and  from  the  great  mass  of 
humanity  is  self-destructive.  They  tell  their  elders 
with  all  the  bitterness  of  youth  that  if  they  expect  suc- 
cess from  them  in  business  or  politics  or  in  whatever 
lines  their  ambition  for  them  has  run,  they  must  let 
them  consult  all  of  humanity;  that  they  must  let  them 


SOCIAL   SETTLEMENTS  121 

find  out  what  the  people  want  and  how  they  want  it. 
It  is  only  the  stronger  young  people,  however,  who 
formulate  this.  Many  of  them  dissipate  their  energies 
in  so-called  enjoyment.  Others  not  content  with  that, 
go  on  studying  and  go  back  to  college  for  their  second 
degrees  ;  not  that  they  are  especially  fond  of  study,  but 
because  they  want  something  definite  to  do,  and  their 
powers  have  been  trained  in  the  direction  of  mental 
accumulation.  Many  are  buried  beneath  this  mental 
accumulation  with  lowered  vitality  and  discontent. 
Walter  Besant  says  theyhave  had  the  vision  that  Peter 
had  when  he  saw  the  great  sheet  let  down  from  heaven, 
wherein  was  neither  clean  nor  unclean.  He  calls  it 
the  sense  of  humanity.  It  is  not  philanthropy  nor 
benevolence,  but  a  thing  fuller  and  wider  than  either  of 
these. 

This  young  life,  so  sincere  in  its  emotion  and  good 
phrases  and  yet  so  undirected,  seems  to  me  as  pitiful 
as  the  other  great  mass  of  destitute  lives.  One  is 
supplementary  to  the  other,  and  some  method  of  com- 
munication can  surely  be  devised.  Mr.  Barnett,  who 
urged  the  first  Settlement, — Toynbee  Hall,  in  East 
London,  —  recognized  this  need  of  outlet  for  the  young 
men  of  Oxford  and  Cambridge,  and  hoped  that  the 
Settlement  would  supply  the  communication.  It  is 
easy  to  see  why  the  Settlement  movement  originated  in 
England,  where  the  years  of  education  are  more  con- 
strained and  definite  than  they  are  here,  where  class 
distinctions  are  more  rigid.  The  necessity  of  it  was 
greater  there,  but  we  are  fast  feeling  the  pressure  of 
the  need  and  meeting  the  necessity  for  Settlements  in 
America.     Our  young  people  feel  nervously  the  need  of      . 

4- 


122    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

putting  theory  into  action,  and  respond  quickly  to 
the  Settlement  form  of  activity. 
/-  Other  motives  which  I  believe  make  toward  the 
Settlement  are  the  result  of  a  certain  renaissance  going 
forward  in  Christianity.  The  impulse  to  share  the 
lives  of  the  poor,  the  desire  to  make  social  service, 
irrespective  of  propaganda,  express  the  spirit  of  Christ, 
is  as  old  as  Christianity  itself.  We  have  no  proof  from 
the  records  themselves  that  the  early  -Roman  Christians, 
who  strained  their  simple  art  to  the  point  of  grotesque- 
ness  in  their  eagerness  to  record  a  ''good  news"  on  the 
walls  of  the  catacombs,  considered  this  good  news  a 
religion.  Jesus  had  no  set  of  truths  labeled  Religious. 
On  the  contrary,  his  doctrine  was  that  all  truth  is  one, 
that  the  appropriation  of  it  is  freedom.  His  teaching 
had  no  dogma  to  mark  it  off  from  truth  and  action  in 
general.  He  himself  called  it  a  revelation  —  a  life. 
These  early  Roman  Christians  received  the  Gospel 
message,  a  command  to  love  all  men,  with  a  certain 
joyous  simplicity.  The  image  of  the  Good  Shepherd 
is(blithe  and  gay  beyond  the  gentlest  shepherd  of  Greek 
mythology ;  the  hart  no  longer  pants,  but  rushes  to 
the  water  brooks.  The  Christians  looked  for  the 
continuous  revelation,  but  believed  what  Jesus  said, 
that  this  revelation,  to  be  retained  and  made  manifest, 
must  be  put  into  terms  of  action ;  that  action  is  the 
only  medium  man  has  for  receiving  and  appropriating 
truth ;  that  the  doctrine  must  be  known  through  the 
will. 

That  Christianity  has  to  be  revealed  and  embodied 
in  the  line  of  social  progress  is  a  corollary  to  the  simple 
proposition,  that  man's  action  is  found  in  his  social 


SOCIAL   SETTLEA/[ENTS  123 

relationships  in  the  way  in  which  he  connects  with  his 
fellows ;  that  his  motives  for  action  are  the  zeal  and 
affection  with  which  he  regards  his  fellows.  By  this 
simple  process  was  created  a  deep  enthusiasm  for  hu- 
manity, which  regarded  man  as  at  once  the  organ  and 
the  object  of  revelation  ;  and  by  this  process  came  about 
the  wonderful  fellowship,  the  true  democracy  of  the  early 
Church,  that  so  captivates  the  imagination.  The 
early  Christians  were  preeminently  nonresistant.  They 
believed  in  love  as  a  cosmic  force.  There  was  no  icono- 
clasm  during  the  minor  peace  of  the  Church.  They 
did  not  yet  denounce  nor  tear  down  temples, norpreach 
the  end  of  the  world.  They  grew  to  a  mighty  number, 
but  it  never  occurred  to  them,  either  in  their  weakness 
or  in  their  strength,  to  regard  other  men  for  an  instant 
as  their  foes  or  as  aliens.  The  spectacle  of  the  Chris- 
tians loving  all  men  was  the  most  astounding  Rome  had 
ever  seen.  They  were  eager  to  sacrifice  themselves  for 
the  weak,  for  children,  and  for  the  aged  ;  they  identified 
themselves  with  slaves  and  did  not  avoid  the  plague ; 
they  longed  to  share  the  common  lot  that  they  might 
receive  the  constant  revelation.  It  was  a  new  treasure 
which  the  early  Christians  added  to  the  sum  of  all 
treasures,  a  joy  hitherto  unknown  in  the  world  —  the 
joy  of  finding  the  Christ  which  lieth  in  each  man,  but 
which  no  man  can  unfold  save  in  fellowship.  A  happi- 
ness ranging  from  the  heroic  to  the  pastoral  enveloped 
them.  They  were  to  possess  a  revelation  as  long  as  life 
had  new  meaning  to  unfold,  new  action  to  propose. 

I  believe  that  there  is  a  distinct  turning  among 
many  young  men  and  women  toward  this  simple 
acceptance    of    Christ's    message.     They    resent    the 


124    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

assumption  that  Christianity  is  a  set  of  ideas  which 
belong  to  the  religious  consciousness,  whatever  that 
may  be.  They  insist  that  it  cannot  be  proclaimed  and 
instituted  apart  from  the  social  life  of  the  community 
and  that  it  must  seek  a  simple  and  natural  expression 
in  the  social  organism  itself.  The  Settlement  movement 
is  only  one  manifestation  of  that  wider  humanitarian 
/^movement  which   throughout   Christendom,   but   pre- 

/[   eminently  in  England,  is  endeavoring  to  embody  itself, 
not  in  a  sect,  but  in  society  itself. 

l\  I  believe  that  this  turning,  this  renaissance  of  the 
Nearly  Christian  humanitarianism,  is  going  on  in  America, 
in  Chicago,  if  you  please,  without  leaders  who  write  or 
philosophize,  without  much  speaking,  but  with  a  bent 
to  express  in  social  service  and  in  terms  of  action  the 
spirit  of  Christ.  Certain  it  is  that  spiritual  force  is 
found  in  the  Settlement  movement,  and  it  is  also  true 
that  this  force  must  be  evoked  and  must  be  called  into 
play  before  the  success  of  any  Settlement  is  assured. 
There  must  be  the  overmastering  belief  that  all  that  is 
noblest  in  life  is  common  to  men  as  men,  in  order  to 
accentuate  the  likenesses  and  ignore  the  differences 
which  are  found  among  the  people  whom  the  Settlement 
constantly  brings  into  juxtaposition.  It  may  be  true, 
as  the  Positivists  insist,  that  the  very  religious  fervor 
of  man  can  be  turned  into  love  for  his  race,  and  his  desire 
for  a  future  life  into  content  to  live  in  the  echo  of  his 
deeds  ;  Paul's  formula  of  seeking  for  the  Christ  which 
lieth  in  each  man  and  founding  our  likenesses  on  him, 
seems  a  simpler  formula  to  many  of  us. 

In  a  thousand  voices  singing  the  Hallelujah  Chorus 
in  Handel's  "Messiah,"  it  is  possible    to   distinguish 


1 


SOCIAL   SETTLEMENTS  125 

the  leading  voices,  but  the  differences  of  training  and 
cultivation  between  them  and  the  voices  of  the  chorus, 
are  lost  in  the  unity  of  purpose  and  in  the  fact  that  they 
are  all  human  voices  lifted  by  a  high  motive.  This  is  a 
weak  illustration  of  what  a  Settlement  attempts  to  do. 
It  aims,  in  a  measure,  to  develop  whatever  of  social 
life  its  neighborhood  may  afford,  to  focus  and  give  form 
to  that  life,  to  bring  to  bear  upon  it  the  results  of  cul- 
tivation and  training ;  but  it  receives  in  exchange  for 
the  music  of  isolated  voices  the  volume  and  strength 
of  the  chorus.  It  is  quite  impossible  for  me  to  say  in 
what  proportion  or  degree  the  subjective  necessity  which 
led  to  the  opening  of  Hull-House  combined  the  three 
trends  :  first,  the  desire  to  interpret  democracy  in  social 
terms  ;  secondly,  the  impulse  beating  at  the  very  source 
of  our  lives,  urging  us  to  aid  in  the  race  progress  ;  and, 
thirdly,  the  Christian  movement  toward  humanitarian-  / 

ism.  It  is  difficult  to  analyze  a  living  thing  ;  the  analy-  -^ 
sis  is  at  best  imperfect.  Many  more  motives  may 
blend  with  the  three  trends ;  possibly  the  desire  for  a 
new  form  of  social  success  due  to  the  nicety  of  imagina- 
tion, which  refuses  worldly  pleasures  unmixed  with  the 
joys'  of  self-sacrifice ;  possibly  a  love  of  approbation, 
so  vast  that  it  is  not  content  with  the  treble  clapping  of 
delicate  hands,  but  wishes  also  to  hear  the  bass  notes 
from  toughened  palms,  may  mingle  with  these. 

The  Settlement,  then,  is  an  experimental  effort  to 
^1^ j^-Pfgg^cEE^ri^^  thp  sorial  and  industriafproblems 
whiclTare  engendered  by  the  modern  conditions  of  lite 
in  a  g?eat  city.  It  msists  that  these  problems  are  not 
confined  to  a"ny^ne  portion  of  a  city.  It  is  an  attempt^ 
to  relieve,  at  the  same  time,  the  overaccumulation   at 


^1  126    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

^  ^  one  end  of  society  and  the  destitution  at  the  other ; 
\^  but  it  assumes  that  this  overaccumulation  and  destitu- 
^^tion  is  most  sorely  felt  in  the  things  that  pertain  to  so- 
>^  Tcial  and  educational  advantages.     From  its  very  nature 
"^  X  it  can  stand  for  no  political  or  social  propaganda.     It 
»^  \fnust,  in  a  sense,  give  the  warm  welcome  of  an  inn  to  all 
nA     such  propaganda,  if  perchance  one  of  them  be  found  an 
^i^  angel.     The  one  thing  to  be  dreaded  in  the  Settlement 
1     is  that  it  lose  its  flexibility,  its  power  of  quick  adaptation, 
V     its  readiness  to  change  its  methods  as  its  environment 
may  demand.     It  must  be  open  to  conviction  and  must 
have  a  deep  and  abiding  sense  of  tolerance.      It  must 
be  hospitable  and  ready  for  experiment.     It  should  de- 
mand from  its  residents  a  scientific  patience  in  the  ac- 
cumulation  of   facts   and   the  steady  holding  of   their 
sympathies  as  one  of  the  best  instruments  for  that  ac- 
cumulation.    It  must  be  grounded  in  a  philosophy  whose 
foundation  is  on  the   solidarity  of   the  human  race,  a 
philosophy  which  will  not  waver  when  the  race  happens 
to  be  represented  by  a  drunken  woman  or  an  idiot  boy. 
Its  residents  must  be  emptied  of  all  conceit  of  opinion 
and  all  self-assertion,  and  ready  to  arouse  and  interpret 
the  public  opinion  of  their  neighborhood.     They  must 
be  content  to  live  quietly  side  by  side  with  their  neigh- 
bors, until  they  grow  into  a  sense  of  relationship  and  mu- 
tual interests.     Their  neighbors  are  held  apart  by  differ- 
ences of  race  and  language  which  the  residents  can  more 
easily  overcome.     They  are  bound  to  see  the  needs  of 
their  neighborhood  as  a  whole,  to  furnish  data  for  legisla- 
tion, and  to  use  their  influence  to  secure  it.    In  short,  resi- 
dents are  pledged  to  devote  themselves  to  the  duties  of 
good  citizenship  and  to  the  arousing  of  the  social  energies 


SOCIAL   SETTLEMENTS  127^ 

which   too    largely  lie  dormant  in  every  neighborhood   \ 
given  over  to  industrialism.     They  are  bound  to  regard    I 
the  entire  life  of  their  city  as  organic,  to  make  an  effort  j 
to  unify   it,   and   to   protest   against  its   over-differenV 
tiation.  ^ 

It  is  always  easy  to  make  all  philosophy  point  one 
particular  moral  and  all  history  adorn  one  particular 
tale ;  but  I  may  be  forgiven  the  reminder  that  the  best 
speculative  philosophy  sets  forth  the  solidarity  of  the 
human  race ;  that  the  highest  moralists  have  taught 
that  without  the  advance  and  improvement  of  the  whole, 
no  man  can  hope  for  any  lasting  improvement  in  his 
own  moral  or  material  individual  condition ;  and  that 
the  subjective  necessity  for  Social  Settlements  is  there- 
fore identical  with  that  necessity,  which  urges  us  on 
toward  social  and  individual  salvation. 


128     TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


CHAPTER  VII 

Some    Early    Undertakings    at    Hull-House 

If  the  early  American  Settlements  stood  for  a 
more  exigent  standard  in  philanthropic  activities, 
insisting  that  each  new  undertaking  should  be 
preceded  by  carefully  ascertained  facts,  then  cer- 
tainly Hull-House  held  to  this  standard  in  the 
opening  of  our  new  coffee-house  first  started-a.a_5.— 
public -kitchen.  An  investigation  of  the  sweatshops 
had  disclosed  the  fact,  that  sewing  women  during 
the  busy  season  paid  little  attention  to  the  feeding 
of  their  families,  for  it  was  only  by_workii]Lg_steadily 
through  the  long  day_tMtjhe_,sxanty_pay_ofJive, 
seven,  or  nine  cents  for  finishing  a  dozen  pairs  of 
trousers  could  be  made  into  a  day's  wage  ;  and  they 
bought  from  the  nearest  grocery  the  canned  goods 
that  could  be  most  quickly  heated,  or  gave  a  few 
pennies  to  the  children  with  which  they  might 
secure  a  lunch  from  a  neighboring  candy  shop. 

One  of  the  residents  made  an  investigation,  at 
the  instance  of  the  United  States  Department  of 
Agriculture,  into  the  food  values  of  the  dietaries  of 
the  various  immigrants,  and  this  was  followed  by 
an  investigation  made  by  another  resident,  for  the 
United  States  Department  of  Labor,  into  the  foods 

K  129 


130    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

of  the  Italian  colony,  on  the  supposition  that  the 
constant  use  of  imported  products  bore  a  distinct 
relation  to  the  cost  of  living.  I  recall  an  Italian 
who,  coming  into  Hull-House  one  day  as  we  were 
sitting  at  the  dinner  table,  expressed  great  surprise 
that  Americans  ate  a  variety  of  food,  because  he 
believed  that  they  partook  only  of  potatoes  and 
beer.  A  little  inquiry  showed  that  this  conclusion 
was  drawn  from  the  fact  that  he  lived  next  to  an 
Irish  saloon  and  had  never  seen  anything  but 
potatoes  going  in  and  beer  coming  out. 

At  that  time  the  New  England  kitchen  was  com- 
paratively new  in  Boston,  and  Mrs.  Richards  who 
was  largely  responsible  for  its  foundation,  hoped 
that  cheaper  cuts  of  meat  and  simpler  vegetables, 
if  they  were  subjected  to  slow  and  thorough 
processes  of  cooking,  might  be  made  attractive 
and  their  nutritive  value  secured  for  the  people 
who  so  sadly  needed  more  nutritious  food.  It  was 
felt  that  this  could  be  best  accomplished  in  public 
kitchens,  where  the  advantage  of  scientific  training 
and  careful  supervision  could  be  secured.  One  of 
the  residents  went  to  Boston  for  a  training  under 
Mrs.  Richards,  and  when  the  Hull-House  kitchen 
was  fitted  under  her  guidance  and  direction,  our 
hopes  ran  high  for  some  modification  of  the  food 
of  the  neighborhood.  We  did  not  reckon,  however, 
with  the  wide  diversity  in  nationality  and  Inherited 
tastes,  and  while  we  sold  a  certain  amount  of  the 
carefully  prepared  soups  and  stews  In  the  neigh- 


UNDERTAKINGS   AT  HULL-HOUSE     131 

boring  factories  —  a  sale  which  has  steadily  in- 
creased throughout  the  years  —  and  were  also 
patronized  by  a  few  households,  perhaps  the 
neighborhood  estimate  was  best  summed  up  by  the 
woman  who  frankly  confessed,  that  the  food  was 
certainly  nutritious,  but  that  she  didn't  like  to  eat 
what  was  nutritious,  that  she  liked  to  eat  "what 
she'd  ruther." 

If  the  dietetics  were  appreciated  but  slowly^ 
the  social  value  of  the  coffee-house  and  the 
gymnasium,  which  were  in  the  same  building,  were 
quickly  demonstrated.  At  that  time  the  saloon 
halls  were  the  only  places  in  the  neighborhood  where/  / 
the  immigrant  could  hold  his  social  gatherings,  and 
where  he  could  celebrate  such  innocent  and  legiti- 
mate occasions  as  weddings  and  christenings. 

These  halls  were  rented  very  cheaply  with  the 
understanding  that  various  sums  of  money  should 
be  ''passed  across  the  bar,"  and  it  was  considered 
a  mean  host  or  guest  who  failed  to  live  up  to  this 
implied  bargain.  The  consequence  was  that  many 
a  reputable  party  ended  with  a  certain  amount  of 
disorder,  due  solely  to  the  fact  that  the  social  in- 
stinct was  traded  upon  and  used  as  a  basis  for 
money  making  by  an  adroit  host.  From  the  be- 
ginning the  young  people's  clubs  had  asked  for 
dancing,  and  nothing  was  more  popular  than  the 
increased  space  for  parties  offered  by  the  gym- 
nasium, with  the  chance  to  serve  refreshments  in 
the    room    below.     We    tried    experiments    with 


132    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

every  known  "soft  drink,"  from  those  extracted 
from  an  expensive  soda  water  fountain  to  slender 
glasses  of  grape  juice,  but  so  far  as  drinks  were 
concerned  we  never  became  a  rival  to  the  saloon, 
nor  indeed  did  any  one  imagine  that  we  were  trying 
to  do  so.  I  remember  one  man  who  looked  about 
the  cozy  little  room  and  said,  "This  would  be  a 
nice  place  to  sit  in  all  day  if  one  could  only  have 
beer."  But  the  coffee-house  gradually  performed 
a  mission  of  its  own  and  became  something  of  a 
social  center  to  the  neighborhood  as  well  as  a  real 
convenience.  Business  men  from  the  adjacent 
factories  and  school  teachers  from  the  nearest 
public  schools,  used  it  increasingly.  The  Hull- 
House  students  and  club  members  supped  together 
in  little  groups  or  held  their  reunions  and  social 
banquets,  as,  to  a  certain  extent,  did  organizations 
from  all  parts  of  the  town.  The  experience  of  the 
coffee-house  taught  us  not  to  hold  to  preconceived 
ideas  of  what  the  neighborhood  ought  to  have, 
but  to  keep  ourselves  in  readiness  to  modify  and 
adapt  our  undertakings  as  we  discovered  those 
things  which  the  neighborhood  was  ready  to  accept. 
Better  food  was  doubtless  needed,  but  more 
attractive  and  safer  places  for  social  gatherings 
were  also  needed,  and  the  neighborhood  was  ready 
for  one  and  not  for  the  other.  We  had  no  hint 
then  in  Chicago  of  the  small  parks  which  were  to 
be  established  fifteen  years  later,  containing  the 
halls   for   dancing   and   their   own   restaurants    in 


UNDERTAKINGS  AT  HULL-HOUSE    133 

buildings  where  the  natural  desire  of  the  young 
for  gayety  and  social  organization,  could  be  safely 
indulged.  Yet  even  in  that  early  day  a  member 
of  the  Hull-House  Men's  Club  who  had  been 
appointed  superintendent  of  Douglas  Park  had 
secured  there  the  first  public  swimming  pool,  and 
his  fellow  club  members  were  proud  of  the  achieve- 
ment. 

There  was  in  the  earliest  undertakings  at  Hull- 
House  a  touch  of  the  artist's  enthusiasm  when  he 
translates  his  inner  vision  through  his  chosen 
material  into  outward  form.  Keenly  conscious  of 
the  social  confusion  all  about  us  and  the  hard 
economic  struggle,  we  at  times  believed  that  the 
very  struggle  itself  might  become  a  source  of 
strength.  The  devotion  of  the  mothers  to  their 
children,  the  dread  of  the  men  lest  they  fail  to  pro- 
vide for  the  family  dependent  upon  their  daily 
exertions,  at  moments  seemed  to  us  the  secret  stores 
of  strength  from  which  society  is  fed,  the  invisible 
array  of  passion  and  feeling  which  are  the  surest 
protectors  of  the  world.  We  fatuously  hoped  that 
we  might  pluck  from  the  human  tragedy  itself  a 
consciousness  of  a  common  destiny  which  should 
bring  its  own  healing,  that  we  might  extract  from 
life's  very  misfortunes  a  power  of  cooperation  which 
should  be  effective  against  them. 

Of  course  there  was  always  present  the  harrowing 
Consciousness  of  the  difference  in  economic  condi- 
tion between  ourselves  and  our  neighbors.     Even 


134    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 


if  we  had  gone  to  live  in  the  most  wretched  tene- 
ment, there  would  have  always  been  an  essential 
difference  between  them  and  ourselves,  for  we  should 

have  had  a  sense  of  secu- 
rity in  regard  to  illness 
and  old  age  and  the  lack 
of  these  two  securities 
are  the  specters  which 
most  persistently  haunt 
the  poor.  Could  we,  in 
spite  of  this,  make  their 
individual  efforts  more 
effective  through  organ- 
ization and  possibly  com- 
plement them  by  small 
efforts  of  our  own  ? 

Some  such  vague  hope 
was  in  our  minds  when 
we  started  the  Hull-House  Cooperative  Coal  Asso- 
ciation, which  led  a  vigorous  life  for  three  years, 
and  developed  a  large  membership  under  the  skill- 
ful advice  of  its  one  paid  officer,  an  English  work- 
ingman  who  had  had  experience  in  cooperative 
societies  at  "'ome."  Some  of  the  meetings  of  the 
association,  in  which  people  met  to  consider  to- 
gether their  basic  dependence  upon  fire  and 
warmth,  had  a  curious  challenge  of  life  about  them. 
Because  the  cooperators  knew  what  it  meant  to 
bring  forth  children  in  the  midst  of  privation  and 
to  see  the  tiny  creatures   struggle  for  life,   their 


UNDERTAKINGS   AT  HULL-HOUSE    135 


recitals  cut  a  cross  section,  as  it  were,  in  that 
world-old  effort  —  the  ''dying  to  live"  which  so 
inevitably  triumphs  over  poverty  and  suffering. 
And  yet  their  very  familiarity  with  hardship  may 
have  been  responsible  for  that  sentiment  which 
traditionally  ruins  business,  for  a  vote  of  the 
cooperators  that  the  basket  buyers  be  given  one 
basket  free  out  of  every  six,  that  the  presentation 
of  five  purchase  tickets  should  entitle  the  holders  to 
a  profit  in  coal  instead  of  stock  '^  because  it  would 
be  a  shame  to  keep  them  waiting  for  the  dividend," 
was  always  pointed  to  by  the  conservative  quarter- 
of-a-ton  buyers  as  the  beginning  of  the  end.  At  any 
rate,  at  the  close  of  the  third  winter,  although  the 
Association  occupied  an  im- 
posing coal  yard  on  the  south- 
east cornerof  theHull-House 
block  and  its  gross  receipts  / 
w^ere  between  three  and  four  ) 
hundred  dollars  a  day,  it  be- 
came evident  that  the  con-  ^ 
cern  could  not  remain  solvent 
if  it  continued  its  philan- 
thropic policy,  and  the  exper- 
iment was  terminated  by  the 
cooperators  taking  up  their 
stock  in  the  remaining  coal. 

Our  next  cooperative  experiment  was  much  more 
successful,  perhaps  because  it  was  much  more 
spontaneous. 


--^ 


136    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

At  a  meeting  of  working  girls  held  at  Hull-House 
during  a  strike  in  a  large  shoe  factory,  the  discus- 
sions made  it  clear  that  the  strikers  who  had  been 
most  easily  frightened,  and  therefore  first  to  capitu- 
late, were  naturally  those  girls  who  were  paying 
board  and  were  afraid  of  being  put  out  if  they  fell 
too  far  behind.  After  a  recital  of  a  case  of  peculiar 
hardship  one  of  them  exclaimed  :  "Wouldn't  it  be 
fine  if  we  had  a  boarding  club  of  our  own,  and  then 
we  could  stand  by  each  other  in  a  time  like  this  ?" 
After  that  events  moved  quickly.  We  read  aloud 
together  Beatrice  Potter's  little  book  on  "Coopera- 
tion," and  discussed  all  the  difficulties  and  fascina- 
tions of  such  an  undertaking,  and  on  the  first  of 
May,  1 89 1,  two  comfortable  apartments  near 
Hull-House  were  rented  and  furnished.  The 
Settlement  was  responsible  for  the  furniture  and 
paid  the  first  month's  rent,  but  beyond  that  the 
members  managed  the  club  themselves.  The 
undertaking  "marched,"  as  the  French  say,  from 
the  very  first,  and  always  on  its  own  feet.  Al- 
though there  were  difficulties,  none  of  them  proved 
insurmountable,  which  was  a  matter  for  great 
satisfaction  in  the  face  of  a  statement  made  by  the 
head  of  the  United  States  Department  of  Labor, 
who,  on  a  visit  to  the  club  when  it  was  but  two  years 
old,  said  that  his  department  had  investigated  many 
cooperative  undertakings,  and  that  none  founded 
and  managed  by  women  had  ever  succeeded.  At 
the   end   of   the    third  year  the  club  occupied  all 


UNDERTAKINGS  AT  HULL-HOUSE     137 

of  the  six  apartments  which  the  original  building 
contained,  and  numbered  fifty  members. 

It  was  in  connection  with  our  efforts  to  secure  a 
building  for  the  Jane  Club,  that  we  first  found  our-'X 
selves  in  the  dilemma  between  the  needs  of  our 
neighbors  and  the  kind-hearted  response  upon  which 
we  had  already  come  to  rely  for  their  relief.  The 
adapted  apartments  in  which  the  Jane  Club  was 
housed  were  inevitably  more  or  less  uncomfortable, 
and  we  felt  that  the  success  of  the  club  justified 
the  erection  of  a  building  for  its  sole  use. 

Up  to  that  time,  our  history  had  been  as  the .. 
minor  peace  of  the  early  Church.  We  had  had 
the  most  generous  interpretation  of  our  efforts. 
Of  course,  many  people  were  indifferent  to  the  idea 
of  the  Settlement ;  others  looked  on  with  tolerant 
and  sometimes  cynical  amusement  which  we  would 
often  encounter  in  a  good  story  related  at  our 
expense ;  but  all  this  was  remote  and  unreal  to  us 
and  we  were  sure  that  if  the  critics  could  but 
touch  ''the  life  of  the  people,"  they  would  u 
stand. 

The  situation  changed  markedly  after  the  Pull- 
man strike,  and  our  efforts  to  secure  factory  legis- 
lation later  brought  upon  us  a  certain  amount  of 
distrust  and  suspicion ;  until  then  we  had  been 
considered  merely  a  kindly  philanthropic  under- 
taking whose  new  form  gave  us  a  certain  idealistic 
glamour.  But  sterner  tests  were  coming  and  one 
of  the  first  was  in  connection  with  the  new  building 


138     TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

for  the  Jane  Club.  A  trustee  of  Hull-House  came 
to  see  us  one  day  with  the  good  news  that  a  friend 
of  his  was  ready  to  give  twenty  thousand  dollars 
with  which  to  build  the  desired  new  clubhouse. 
When,  however,  he  divulged  the  name  of  his  gen- 
erous friend,  it  proved  to  be  that  of  a  man  who 
was  notorious  for  underpaying  the  girls  in  his  estab- 
lishment and  concerning  whom  there  were  even 
darker  stories.  It  seemed  clearly  impossible  to  erect 
a  clubhouse  for  working  girls  with  such  money  and 
we  at  once  said  that  we  must  decline  the  offer.  The 
trustee  of  Hull-House  was  put  in  the  most  embar- 
rassing situation ;  he  had,  of  course,  induced  the 
man  to  give  the  money  and  had  had  no  thought 
but  that  it  would  be  eagerly  received ;  he  would 
now  be  obliged  to  return  with  the  astonishing,  not 
to  say  insulting,  news  that  the  money  was  consid- 
ered unfit. 

In  the  long  discussion  which  followed,  it  gradu- 
ally became  clear  to  all  of  us  that  such  a  refusal 
could  be  valuable  only  as  it  might  reveal  to  the 
man  himself  and  to  others,  public  opinion  in  regard 
to  certain  methods  of  money-making,  but  that  from 
the  very  nature  of  the  case  our  refusal  of  this 
money  could  not  be  made  public  because  a  repre- 
sentative of  Hull-House  had  asked  for  it.  However, 
the  basic  fact  remained  that  we  could  not  accept 
the  money,  and  of  this  the  trustee  himself  was  fully 
convinced.  This  incident  occurred  during  a  period 
of  much  discussion  concerning  "tainted  money" 


UNDERTAKINGS   AT  HULL-HOUSE     131 

and  is  perhaps  typical  of  the  difficulty  of  dealing 
with  it.  It  is  impossible  to  know  how  far  we  may 
blame  the  individual  for  doing  that  which  all  of 
his  competitors  and  his  associates  consider  legiti- 
mate ;  at  the  same  time,  social  changes  can  only 
be  inaugurated  by  those  who  feel  the  unrighteous- 
ness of  contemporary  conditions,  and  the  expres- 
sion of  their  scruples  may  be  the  one  opportunity 
for  pushing  forward  moral  tests  into  that  dubious 
area  wherein  wealth  is  accumulated. 

In  the  course  of  time  a  new  club  house  was  built  by 
an  old  friend  of  Hull-House  much  interested  in  work- 
ing girls,  and  this  has  been  occupied  for  twelve  years 
by  the  very  successful  cooperating  Jane  Club.  The 
incident  of  the  early  refusal  is  associated  in  my 
mind  with  a  long  talk  upon  the  subject  of  question- 
able money  I  held  with  the  warden  of  Toynbee  Hall, 
whom  I  visited  at  Bristol  where  he  was  then  canon 
In  the  Cathedral.  By  way  of  illustration  he  showed 
me  a  beautiful  little  church  which  had  been  built  by 
the  last  slave-trading  merchant  in  Bristol,  who  had 
been  much  disapproved  of  by  his  fellow  townsmen 
and  had  hoped  by  this  transmutation  of  Ill-gotten 
money  Into  exquisite  Gothic  architecture  to  recon- 
cile himself  both  to  God  and  man.  His  Impulse 
to  build  may  have  been  born  from  his  own  scruples 
or  from  the  quickened  consciences  of  his  neighbors 
who  saw  that  the  world-old  Iniquity  of  enslaving 
men  must  at  length  come  to  an  end.  The  Aboli- 
tionists may  have  regarded  this  beautiful  building 


I40    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

as  the  fruit  of  a  contrite  heart,  or  they  may  have 
scorned  it  as  an  attempt  to  magnify  the  goodness 
of  a  slave  trader  and  thus  perplex  the  doubting 
citizens  of  Bristol  in  regard  to  the  entire  moral 
issue. 

Canon  Barnett  did  not  pronounce  judgment  on 
the  Bristol  merchant.  He  was,  however,  quite  clear 
upon  the  point  that  a  higher  moral  standard  for 
industrial  life  must  be  embodied  in  legislation  as 
rapidly  as  possible,  that  it  may  bear  equally  upon 
all,  and  that  an  individual  endeavoring  to  secure 
this  legislation  must  forbear  harsh  judgment.  This 
was  doubtless  a  sound  position,  but  during  all  the 
period  of  hot  discussion  concerning  tainted  money 
I  never  felt  clear  enough  on  the  general  principle 
involved,  to  accept  the  many  invitations  to  write 
and  speak  upon  the  subject,  although  I  received 
much  instruction  in  the  many  letters  of  disapproval 
sent  to  me  by  radicals  of  various  schools  because 
I  was  a  member  of  the  university  extension  staff 
of  the  then  new  University  of  Chicago,  the  right- 
eousness of  whose  foundation  they  challenged. 

A  little  incident  of  this  time  illustrated  to  me 
the  confusion  in  the  minds  of  at  least  many  older 
men  between  religious  teaching  and  advancing 
morality.  One  morning  I  received  a  letter  from 
the  head  of  a  Settlement  in  New  York  expressing 
his  perplexity  over  the  fact  that  his  board  of 
trustees  had  asked  money  from  a  man  notorious 
for  his  unscrupulous  business  methods.     My  corre- 


UNDERTAKINGS  AT  HULL-HOUSE     141 

spondent  had  placed  his  resignation  in  the  hands  of 
his  board,  that  they  might  accept  it  at  any  time 
when  they  felt  his  utterances  on  the  subject  of 
tainted  money  were  offensive,  for  he  wished  to  be 
free  to  openly  discuss  a  subject  of  such  grave  moral 
import.  The  very  morning  when  my  mind  was 
full  of  the  questions  raised  by  this  letter,  I  received 
a  call  from  the  daughter  of  the  same  business  man 
whom  my  friend  considered  so  unscrupulous.  She 
was  passing  through  Chicago  and  came  to  ask  me 
to  give  her  some  arguments  which  she  might  later 
use  with  her  father  to  confute  the  charge  that  Set- 
tlements were  irreligious.  She  said,  "You  see,  he 
has  been  asked  to  give  money  to  our  Settlement 
and  would  like  to  do  it,  if  his  conscience  was  only 
clear ;  he  disapproves  of  Settlements  because  they 
give  no  religious  instruction ;  he  has  always  been  a 
very  devout  man." 

I  remember  later  discussing  the  incident  with 
Washington  Gladden  who  was  able  to  parallel  it 
from  his  own  experience.  Now  that  this  discussion 
upon  tainted  money  has  subsided,  it  is  easy  to  view 
it  with  a  certain  detachment  impossible  at  the 
moment,  and  it  is  even  difficult  to  understand  why 
the  feeling  should  have  been  so  intense,  although  it 
doubtless  registered  genuine  moral  concern. 

There  was  room  for  discouragement  in  the  many 
unsuccessful  experiments  in  cooperation  which 
were  carried  on  in  Chicago  during  the  early  nine- 
ties ;    a  carpenter  shop  on  Van  Buren  Street  near 


142    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

Halsted,  a  labor  exchange  started  by  the  unem- 
ployed, not  so  paradoxical  an  arrangement  as  it 
seems,  and  a  very  ambitious  plan  for  a  country 
colony  which  was  finally  carried  out  at  Ruskin, 
Tennessee.  In  spite  of  failures,  cooperative  schemes 
went  on,  some  of  the  same  men  appearing  in  one 
after  another  with  irrepressible  optimism.  I  re- 
member during  a  cooperative  congress,  which 
met  at  Hull-House  in  the  World's  Fair  summer 
that  Mr.  Henry  D.  Lloyd,  who  collected  records  of 
cooperative  experiments  with  the  enthusiasm  with 
which  other  men  collect  coins  or  pictures,  put  before 
the  congress  some  of  the  remarkable  successes  in 
Ireland  and  North  England,  which  he  later  embodied 
in  his  book  on  "  Copartnership."  One  of  the  old- 
time  cooperators  denounced  the  modern  method  as 
"too  much  like  cut-throat  business"  and  declared 
himself  in  favor  of  "principles  which  may  have 
failed  over  and  over  again,  but  are  nevertheless  as 
sound  as  the  law  of  gravitation."  Mr.  Lloyd  and 
I  agreed  that  the  fiery  old  man  presented  as  fine  a 
spectacle  of  devotion  to  a  lost  cause  as  either  of 
us  had  ever  seen,  although  we  both  possessed  mem- 
ories well  stored  with  such  romantic  attachments. 

And  yet  this  dream  that  men  shall  cease  to  waste 
strength  in  competition  and  shall  come  to  pool 
their  powers  of  production,  is  coming  to  pass  all 
over  the  face  of  the  earth.  Five  years  later  in  the 
same  Hull-House  hall  in  which  the  cooperative 
congress  was  held,  an  Italian  senator  told  a  large 


UNDERTAKINGS  AT  HULL-HOUSE     143 

audience  of  his  fellow  countrymen  of  the  success- 
ful system  of  cooperative  banks  in  north  Italy  and 
of  their  cooperative  methods  of  selling  produce  to 
the  value  of  millions  of  francs  annually ;  still 
later  Sir  Horace  Plunkett  related  the  remarkable 
successes  in  cooperation  in  Ireland. 

I  have  seldom  been  more  infected  by  enthusiasm 
than  I  once  was  in  Dulwich  at  a  meeting  of  English 
cooperators  where  I  was  fairly  overwhelmed  by 
the  fervor  underlying  the  businesslike  proceedings 
of  the  congress,  and  certainly  when  I  served  as  a 
juror  in  the  Paris  Exposition  of  1900,  nothing  in  the 
entire  display  in  the  department  of  Social  Economy 
was  so  imposing  as  the  building  housing  the  exhibit, 
which  had  been  erected  by  cooperative  trade- 
unions  without  the  assistance  of  a  single  contractor., 

And  so  one's  faith  is  kept  alive  as  one  occasion- 
ally meets  a  realized  ideal  of  better  human  rela- 
tions. At  least  traces  of  successful  cooperation 
are  found  even  in  individualistic  America.  I  recall 
my  enthusiasm  on  the  day  when  I  set  forth  to 
lecture  at  New  Harmony,  Indiana,  for  I  had  early 
been  thrilled  by  the  tale  of  Robert  Owen,  as  every 
young  person  must  be  who  is  interested  in  social 
reform ;  I  was  delighted  to  find  so  much  of  his 
spirit  still  clinging  to  the  little  town  which  had 
long  ago  held  one  of  his  ardent  experiments,  al- 
though the  poor  old  cooperators,  who  for  many 
years  claimed  friendship  at  Hull-House  because 
they  heard  that  we  ''had  once  tried  a  cooperative 


144    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

coal   association,"  might  well  have  convinced  me 
of  the  persistency  of  the  cooperative  ideal. 

Many  experiences  in  those  early  years,  although 
vivid,  seemed  to  contain  no  illumination  ;  neverthe- 
less they  doubtless  permanently  affected  our  judg- 
ments concerning  what  is  called  crime  and  vice.  I 
recall  a  series  of  striking  episodes  on  the  day  when 
I  took  the  wife  and  child,  as  well  as  the  old  god- 
father, of  an  Italian  convict  to  visit  him  in  the  State 
Penitentiary.  When  we  approached  the  prison, 
the  sight  of  its  heavy  stone  walls  and  armed  sentries 
threw  the  godfather  into  a  paroxysm  of  rage; 
he  cast  his  hat  upon  the  ground  and  stamped  upon 
it,  tore  his  hair,  and  loudly  fulminated  in  weird 
Italian  oaths,  until  one  of  the  guards,  seeing  his 
strange  actions,  came  to  inquire  if  "the  gentleman 
was  having  a  fit."  When  we  finally  saw  the  con- 
vict, his  wife,  to  my  extreme  distress,  talked  of 
nothing  but  his  striped  clothing,  until  the  poor 
man  wept  with  chagrin.  Upon  our  return  journey 
to  Chicago,  the  little  son  aged  eight  presented  me 
with  two  oranges,  so  affectionately  and  gayly  that 
I  was  filled  with  reflections  upon  the  advantage  of 
each  generation  making  a  fresh  start,  when  the  train 
boy,  finding  the  stolen  fruit  in  my  lap,  violently 
threatened  to  arrest  the  child.  But  stranger  than 
any  episode  was  the  fact  itself  that  neither  the  con- 
vict, his  wife  nor  his  godfather  for  a  moment  con- 
sidered him  a  criminal.  He  had  merely  gotten 
excited  over  cards  and  had  stabbed  his  adversary 


UNDERTAKINGS  AT  HULL-HOUSE    145 

with  a  knife.  "Why  should  a  man  who  took  his 
luck  badly,  be  kept  forever  from  the  sun  ?"  was 
their  reiterated  inquiry. 

I  recall  our  perplexity  over  the  first  girls  who  had 
*'gone  astray," — ^the  poor,  little,  forlorn  objects, 
fifteen  and  sixteen  years  old,  with  their  moral 
natures  apparently  untouched  and  unawakened ; 
one  of  them  whom  the  police  had  found  in  a  pro- 
fessional house  and  asked  us  to  shelter  for  a  few 
days  until  she  could  be  used  as  a  witness,  was 
clutching  a  battered  doll  which  she  had  kept  with 
her  during  her  six  months  of  an  "evil  life."  Two 
of  these  prematurely  aged  children  came  to  us  one 
day  directly  from  the  maternity  ward  of  the  Cook 
County  hospital,  each  with  a  baby  in  her  arms, 
asking  for  protection,  because  they  did  not  want 
to  go  home  for  fear  of  "being  licked."  For  them 
were  no  jewels  nor  idle  living  such  as  the  story- 
books portrayed.  The  first  of  the  older  women 
whom  I  knew  came  to  Hull-House  to  ask  that  her 
young  sister,  who  was  about  to  arrive  from  Ger- 
many, might  live  near  us  ;  she  wished  to  find  her 
respectable  work  and  wanted  her  to  have  the 
"decent  pleasures"  that  Hull-House  afforded. 
After  the  arrangement  had  been  completed  and  I 
had  in  a  measure  recovered  from  my  astonishment 
at  the  businesslike  way  in  which  she  spoke  of  her 
own  life,  I  ventured  to  ask  her  history.  In  a  very 
few  words  she  told  me  that  she  had  come  from  Ger- 
many as  a  music  teacher  to  an  American  family. 


146    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

At  the  end  of  two  years,  in  order  to  avoid  a  scandal 
involving  the  head  of  the  house,  she  had  come  to 
Chicago  where  her  child  was  born,  but  when  the 
remittances  ceased  after  its  death,  finding  herself 
without  home  and  resources,  she  had  gradually 
become  involved  in  her  present  mode  of  life.  By 
dint  of  utilizing  her  family  solicitude,  we  finally 
induced  her  to  move  into  decent  lodgings  before 
her  sister  arrived,  and  for  a  difficult  year  she  sup- 
ported herself  by  her  exquisite  embroidery.  At 
the  end  of  that  time,  she  gave  up  the  struggle,  the 
more  easily  as  her  young  sister,  well  established  in 
the  dressmaking  department  of  a  large  shop,  had 
begun  to  suspect  her  past  life. 

But  discouraging  as  these  and  other  similar  efforts 
often  were,  nevertheless  the  difficulties  were  infi- 
nitely less  in  those  days  when  we  dealt  with  ''fallen 
girls"  than  in  the  years  following  when  the  "white 
slave  traffic"  became  gradually  established  and 
when  agonized  parents,  as  well  as  the  victims  them- 
selves, were  totally  unable  to  account  for  the 
situation.  In  the  light  of  recent  disclosures,  it 
seems  as  if  we  were  unaccountably  dull  not  to  have 
seen  what  was  happening,  especially  to  the  Jewish 
girls  among  whom  "the  home  trade  of  the  white 
slave  traffic"  was  first  carried  on  and  who  were  thus 
made  to  break  through  countless  generations  of 
chastity.  We  early  encountered  the  difficulties  of 
that  old  problem  of  restoring  the  woman,  or  even 
the  child,  Into  the  society  she  has  once  outraged. 


UNDERTAKINGS  AT  HULL-HOUSE    147 

I  well  remember  our  perplexity  when  we  attempted 
to  help  two  girls  straight  from  a  Virginia  tobacco 
factory,  who  had  been  decoyed  into  a  disreputable 
house  when  innocently  seeking  a  lodging  on  the 
late  evening  of  their  arrival.  Although  they  had 
been  rescued  promptly,  the  stigma  remained,  and 
we  found  it  impossible  to  permit  them  to  join  any 
of  the  social  clubs  connected  with  Hull-House,  not-^ 
so  much  because  there  was  danger  of  contamination 
as  because  the  parents  of  the  club  members  woul 
have  resented  their  presence  most  hotly.  One  o 
our  trustees  succeeded  in  persuading  a  repentant 
girl,  fourteen  years  old,  whom  we  tried  to  give  a 
fresh  start  in  another  part  of  the  city,  to  attend  a 
Sunday  School  class  of  a  large  Chicago  church. 
The  trustee  hoped  that  the  contact  with  nice  girls, 
as  well  as  the  moral  training,  would  help  the  poor 
child  on  her  hard  road.  But  unfortunately  tales 
of  her  shortcomings  reached  the  superintendent 
who  felt  obliged,  in  order  to  protect  the  other  girls, 
to  forbid  her  the  school.  She  came  back  to  tell  us 
about  it,  defiant  as  well  as  discouraged,  and  had  it 
not  been  for  the  experience  with  our  own  clubs,  we 
could  easily  have  joined  her  indignation  over  a 
church  which  "acted  as  if  its  Sunday  School  was  a 
show  window  for  candy  kids." 

In  spite  of  poignant  experiences  or,  perhaps,  be- 
cause of  them,  the  memory  of  the  first  years  at  Hull- 
House  is  more  or  less  blurred  with  fatigue,  for  we 
could  of  course  become  accustomed  only  gradually  to 


148     TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

the  unending  activity  and  to  the  confusion  of  a  house 
constantly  filling  and  refilling  with  groups  of  people. 
The  little  children  who  came  to  the  kindergarten 
in  the  morning  were  followed  by  the  afternoon  clubs 
of  older  children,  and  those  in  turn  made  way  for 
the  educational  and  social  organizations  of  adults, 
occupying  every  room  in  the  house  every  evening. 
All  one's  habits  of  living  had  to  be  readjusted,  and 
any  student's  tendency  to  sit  with  a  book  by  the 
fire  was  of  necessity  definitely  abandoned. 

To  thus  renounce  "the  luxury  of  personal  prefer- 
ence" was,  however,  a  mere  trifle  compared  to  our 
perplexity  over  the  problems  of  an  industrial 
neighborhood  situated  in  an  unorganized  city. 
Life  pressed  hard  in  many  directions  and  yet  it 
has  always  seemed  to  me  rather  interesting  that 
when  we  were  so  distressed  over  its  stern  aspects 
and  so  impressed  with  the  lack  of  municipal  regu- 
lations, the  first  building  erected  for  Hull-House 
should  have  been  designed  for  an  art  gallery,  for 
although  it  contained  a  reading-room  on  the  first 
floor  and  a  studio  above,  the  largest  space  on  the 
second  floor  was  carefully  designed  and  lighted  for 
art  exhibits,  which  had  to  do  only  with  the  cultiva- 
tion of  that  which  appealed  to  the  powers  of  enjoy- 
ment as  over  against  a  wage-earning  capacity.  It 
was  also  significant  that  a  Chicago  business  man, 
fond  of  pictures  himself,  responded  to  this  first  ap- 
peal of  the  new  and  certainly  puzzling  undertaking 
called  a  Settlement. 


UNDERTAKINGS  AT  HULL-HOUSE     149 


fc 


The  situation  was  somewhat  compHcated  by  the 
fact  that  at  the  time  the  building  was  erected  in 
1 89 1,  our  free  lease  of  the  land  upon  which  Hull- 
House  stood  expired  in  1895.  The  donor  of  the 
building,  however,  overcame  the  difficulty  by  simply 
calling  his  gift  a  donation  of  a  thousand  dollars 
a  year.  This  restriction  of  course  necessitated  the 
simplest  sort  of  a  structure,  although  I  remember 
on  the  exciting  day 
when  the  new  build-  r     ;i.     ^^    ^ 

ing  was  promised  to 
us,  that  I  looked  up 
my  European  note- 
book which  contained 
the  record  of  my  expe- 
rience in  Ulm,  hoping 
that  I  might  find  a 
description  of  what  I 
then  thought  "a 
Cathedral  of  Human- 
ity"   ought    to    be. 

The  description  was  "low  and  widespreading  as  to 
include  all  men  in  fellowship  and  mutual  responsi- 
bility even  as  the  older  pinnacles  and  spires  indicated 
communion  with  God."  The  description  did  not 
prove  of  value  as  an  architectural  motive  I  am  afraid, 
although  the  architects,  w^ho  have  remained  our 
friends  through  all  the  years,  performed  marvels 
with  a  combination  of  complicated  demands  and 
little  money.      At  the  moment  when  I  read  this 


ISO    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

girlish  outbreak  it  gave  me  much  comfort,  for 
in  those  days  in  addition  to  our  other  perplexities 
Hull-House  was  often  called  irreligious. 

These  first  buildings  were  very  precious  to  us 
and  it  afforded  us  the  greatest  pride  and  pleasure 
as  one  building  after  another  was  added  to  the 
Hull-House  group.  They  clothed  in  brick  and 
mortar  and  made  visible  to  the  world  that  which 
we  were  trying  to  do ;  they  stated  to  Chicago 
that  education  and  recreation  ought  to  be  extended 
to  the  immigrants.  The  boys  came  in  great 
numbers  to  our  provisional  gymnasium  fitted  up  in 
a  former  saloon,  and  it  seemed  to  us  quite  as  natural 
that  a  Chicago  man,  fond  of  athletics,  should 
erect  a  building  for  them,  as  that  the  boys  should 
clamor  for  more  room. 

I  do  not  wish  to  give  a  false  impression,  for  we 
were  often  bitterly  pressed  for  money  and  worried 
by  the  prospect  of  unpaid  bills,  and  we  gave  up  one 
golden  scheme  after  another  because  we  could  not 
afford  it ;  we  cooked  the  meals  and  kept  the  books 
and  washed  the  windows  without  a  thought  of 
hardship  if  we  thereby  saved  money  for  the  con- 
summation of  some  ardently  desired  undertaking. 

But  in  spite  of  our  financial  stringency,  I  always 
believed  that  money  would  be  given  when  we  had 
once  clearly  reduced  the  Settlement  idea  to  the 
actual  deed.  This  chapter,  therefore,  would  be 
incomplete  if  it  did  not  record  a  certain  theory  of 
nonresistance  or  rather  universal  good  will  which  I 


UNDERTAKINGS   AT  HULL-HOUSE    151 

had  worked  out  in  connection  with  the  Settlement 
idea  and  which  was  later  so  often  and  so  rudely 
disturbed.  At  that  time  I  had  come  to  believe 
that  if  the  activities  of  Hull-House  were  ever  mis- 
understood, it  w^ould  be  either  because  there  was 
not  time  to  fully  explain  or  because  our  motives 
had  become  mixed,  for  L  was  convinced  that  dis- 
interested action  was  like  truth  or  beauty  in  its 
lucidity  and  power  of  appeal. 

But  more  gratifying  than  any  understanding  or 
response  from  without  could  possibly  be,  was  the 
consciousness  that  a  growing  group  of  residents 
was  gathering  at  Hull-House,  held  together  in  that 
soundest  of  all  social  bonds,  the  companionship  of 
mutual  interests.  These  residents  came  primarily 
because  they  were  genuinely  interested  in  the  social 
situation  and  believed  that  the  Settlement  w^as  valu- 
able as  a  method  of  approach  to  it.  A  house  in 
which  the  men  residents  lived  was  opened  across 
the  street,  and  at  the  end  of  the  first  five  years  the 
Hull-House  residential  force  numbered  fifteen,  a 
majority  of  whom  still  remain  identified  with  the 
Settlement. 

Even  in  those  early  years  we  caught  glimpses  of 
the  fact  that  certain  social  sentiments,  which  are 
''the  difi^icult  and  cumulating  product  of  human 
growth"  and  which  like  all  higher  aims  live  only  by 
communion  and  fellowship,  are  cultivated  most 
easily  in  the  fostering  soil  of  a  community  life. 

Occasionally  I  obscurely  felt  as  if  a  demand  were 


152    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

being  made  upon  us  for  a  ritual  which  should  express 
and  carry  forward  the  hope  of  the  social  movement. 
I  was  constantly  bewildered  by  the  number  of  re- 
quests I  received  to  officiate  at  funeral  services 
and  by  the  curious  confessions  made  to  me  by  total 
strangers.  For  a  time  I  accepted  the  former  and 
on  one  awful  occasion  furnished  ''the  poetic  part" 
of  a  wedding  ceremony  really  performed  by  a 
justice  of  the  peace,  but  I  soon  learned  to  stead- 
fastly refuse  such  offices,  although  I  saw  that  for 
many  people  without  church  affiliations  the  vague 
humanitarianism  the  Settlement  represented  was 
the  nearest  approach  they  could  find  to  an  expres- 
sion of  their  religious  sentiments. 

These  hints  of  what  the  Settlement  might  mean 
to  at  least  a  few  spirits  among  its  contemporaries 
became  clear  to  me  for  the  first  time  one  summer's 
day  in  rural  England,  when  I  discussed  with  John 
Trevor  his  attempts  to  found  a  labor  church  and 
his  desire  to  turn  the  toil  and  danger  attached  to 
the  life  of  the  workingman  into  the  means  of  a 
universal  fellowship.  That  very  year  a  papyrus 
leaf  brought  to  the  British  Museum  from  Egypt, 
containing  among  other  sayings  of  Jesus,  "Raise 
the  stone,  and  there  thou  shalt  find  me ;  cleave  the 
wood  and  I  am  there,"  was  a  powerful  reminder 
to  all  England  of  the  basic  relations  between  daily 
labor  and  Christian  teaching. 

In  those  early  years  at  Hull-House  we  were, 
however,  In  no  danger  of  losing  ourselves  In  mazes 


UNDERTAKINGS   AT  HULL-HOUSE    153 

of  speculation  or  mysticism,  and  there  was  shrewd 
penetration  in  a  compliment  I  received  from  one  of 
our  Scotch  neighbors.  He  came  down  Polk  Street 
as  I  was  standing  near  the  foundations  of  our 
new  gymnasium,  and  in  response  to  his  friendly 
remark  that  "Hull-House  was  spreading  out,"  I 
replied  that  ''Perhaps  we  were  spreading  out  too 
fast."  ''Oh,  no,"  he  rejoined,  "you  can  afford  to 
spread  out  wide,  you  are  so  well  planted  in  the 
mud,"  giving  the  compliment,  however,  a  practical 
turn,  as  he  glanced  at  the  deep  mire  on  the  then 
unpaved  street.  It  was  this  same  condition  of 
Polk  Street  which  had  caused  the  crown  prince 
of  Belgium  when  he  was  brought  upon  a  visit  to 
Hull-House  to  shake  his  head  and  meditatively 
remark,  "There  is  not  such  a  street  —  no,  not  one  — 
in  all  the  territory  of  Belgium." 

At  the  end  of  five  years  the  residents  of  Hull- 
House  published  some  first  found  facts  and  our 
reflections  thereon  in  a  book  called  "Hull-House 
Maps  and  Papers."  The  maps  were  taken  from 
information  collected  by  one  of  the  residents  for 
the  United  States  Bureau  of  Labor  in  the  investi- 
gation Into  "the  slums  of  great  cities"  and  the 
papers  treated  of  various  neighborhood  matters 
with  candor  and  genuine  concern  if  not  with  skill. 
The  first  edition  became  exhausted  in  two  years, 
and  apparently  the  Boston  publisher  did  not  con- 
sider the  book  worthy  of  a  second. 


CHAPTER  VIII 
Problems  of  Poverty 


That  neglected  and  forlorn  old  age  is  daily- 
brought  to  the  attention  of  a  Settlement  which 
undertakes  to  bear  its  share  of  the  neighborhood 
burden  imposed  by  poverty,  was  pathetically  clear 
to  us  during  our  first  months  of  residence  at  Hull- 

^i^jj- ,y   House.     One  day 


'  F-^,  \  a  boy  of  ten  led 
'  J  a  tottering  old 
^  lady  into  the 
i  House,  saying 
)  that  she  had  slept 
)  for  six  weeks  in 
their  kitchen  on  a 
bed  made  up  next 
to  the  stove  ;  that 
she  had  come 
when  her  son  died, 
although  none  of  them  had  ever  seen  her  before ; 
but  because  her  son  had  ''once  worked  in  the  same 
shop  with  Pa  she  thought  of  him  when  she  had 
nowhere  to  go."  The  little  fellow  concluded  by 
saying  that  our  house  was  so  much  bigger  than 
theirs  that  he  thought  we  would  have  more  room 

154 


A  Spent  Old  :Man. 


PROBLEMS   OF   POVERTY  155 

for  beds.  The  old  woman  herself  said  absolutely 
nothing,  but  looking  on  with  that  gripping  fear  of 
the  poorhouse  in  her  eyes,  she  was  a  living  embodi- 
ment of  that  dread  which  is  so  heart-breaking 
that  the  occupants  of  the  County  Infirmary  them- 
selves seem  scarcely  less  wretched  than  those  who 
are  making  their  last  stand  against  it. 

This  look  was  almost  more  than  I  could  bear 
for  only  a  few  days  before  some  frightened  women 
had  bidden  me  come  quickly  to  the  house  of  an 
old  German  woman,  whom  two  men  from  the 
county  agent's  office  were  attempting  to  remove 
to  the  County  Infirmary.  The  poor  old  creature 
had  thrown  herself  bodily  upon  a  small  and  battered 
chest  of  drawers  and  clung  there,  clutching  it  so 
firmly  that  it  would  have  been  impossible  to  remove 
her  without  also  taking  the  piece  of  furniture.  She 
did  not  weep  nor  moan  nor  indeed  make  any 
human  sound,  but  between  her  broken  gasps  for 
breath  she  squealed  shrilly  like  a  frightened  animal 
caught  in  a  trap.  The  little  group  of  women  and 
children  gathered  at  her  door  stood  aghast  at  this 
realization  of  the  black  dread  which  always  clouds 
the  lives  of  the  very  poor  when  work  is  slack,  but 
which  constantly  grows  more  imminent  and  threat- 
ening as  old  age  approaches.  The  neighborhood 
women  and  I  hastened  to  make  all  sorts  of  promises 
as  to  the  support  of  the  old  woman  and  the  county 
officials,  only  too  glad  to  be  rid  of  their  unhappy 
duty,  left  her  to  our  ministrations.     This  dread  of 


156    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

the  poorhouse,  the  result  of  centuries  of  deterrent 

Poor  Law  administration,  seemed  to  me  not  without 

some  justification  one  summer  when  I  found  myself 

perpetually  distressed  by  the  unnecessary  idleness 

and  forlornness  of   the   old  women    in    the    Cook 

County  Infirmary,  many  of  whom  I  had  known  in 

the  years  when  activity  was  still  a  necessity,  and 

when  they  yet  felt  bustlingly  important.     To  take 

away  from  an  old  woman  whose  life  has  been  spent 

in  household  cares  all  the  foolish  little  belongings 

to  which  her  affections  cling  and  to  which  her  very 

fingers  have  become  accustomed,  is  to  take  away 

her  last  incentive  to  activity,  almost  to  life  itself. 

To  give  an  old  woman  only  a  chair  and  a  bed,  to 

leave  her  no  cupboard  in  which  her  treasures  may 

be  stowed,  not  only  that  she  may  take  them  out 

when  she  desires  occupation,  but  that  her  mind  may 

dwell  upon  them  in  moments  of  revery,  is  to  reduce 

living  almost  beyond  the  limit  of  human  endurance. 

The  poor  creature  who  clung  so  desperately  to 

her  chest  of  drawers  was  really  clinging  to  the  last 

remnant  of  normal  living  —  a   symbol  of  all   she 

was  asked  to  renounce.     For  several  years  after 

thris  summer  I  invited  five  or  six  old  w^omen  to  take 

a  two  weeks'  vacation  from  the  poorhouse  which 

they  eagerly  and  even  gayly  accepted.     Almost  all 

the  old  men  in  the  County  Infirmary  wander  away 

each  summer  taking  their  chances  for  finding  food 

or  shelter  and  return  much  refreshed  by  the  little 

"tramp,"  but  the  old  women  cannot  do  this  unless 


PROBLEMS   OF   POVERTY  iS7 

they  have  some  help  from  the  outside,  and  yet  the 
expenditure  of  a  very  Httle  money  secures  for  them 
the  coveted  vacation.  I  found  that  a  few  pennies 
paid  their  car  fare  into  town,  a  dollar  a  week  pro- 
cured a  lodging  with  an  old  acquaintance  ;  assured 
of  two  good  meals  a  day  in  the  Hull-House  coffee- 
house they  could  count  upon  numerous  cups  of 
tea  a'mong  old  friends  to  whom  they  would  airily 
state  that  they  had  ''come  out  for  a  little  change" 
and  hadn't  yet  made  up  their  minds  about  ''going 
in  again  for  the  winter."  They  thus  enjoyed  a 
two  weeks'  vacation  to  the  top  of  their  bent  and 
returned  with  wondrous  tales  of  their  adventures, 
with  which  they  regaled  the  other  paupers  during 
the  long  winter. 

The    reminiscences    of   these   old   women,    their 
shrewd  comments  upon  life,  their  sense  of  having 
reached  a  point  where  they  may  at  last  speak  freely 
with   nothing  to  lose  because  of  their  frankness, 
makes  them  often  the  most  delightful  of  companions. 
I   recall  one  of  my  guests,  the  mother  of  many 
scattered  children,  whose  one  bright  spot  through 
all  the  dreary  years  had  been  the  wedding  feast 
of  her  son  Mike,  —  a  feast  which  had  become  trans- 
formed through   long  meditation   into  the   nectar 
and    ambrosia   of   the   very   gods.     As    a   farewell 
fling  before  she  went  "in"  again,  we  dined  together 
upon  chicken  pie,  but  it  did  not  taste  like  "the 
chicken    pie    at    Mike's    wedding"    and    she    was 
disappointed  after  all. 


158     TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

Even  death  itself  sometimes  fails  to  bring  the 
dignity  and  serenity  which  one  would  fain  associate 
with  old  age.  I  recall  the  dying  hour  of  one  old 
Scotchwoman  whose  long  struggle  to  ''keep  re- 
spectable" had  so  embittered  her,  that  her  last 
words  were  gibes  and  taunts  for  those  vv^ho  were 
trying  to  minister  to  her.  "So  you  came  in  your- 
self this  morning,  did  you  ?  You  only  sent  things 
yesterday.  I  guess  you  knew  when  the  doctor 
was  coming.  Don't  try  to  warm  my  feet  with 
anything  but  that  old  jacket  that  I've  got  there; 
it  belonged  to  my  boy  who  was  drowned  at  sea 
nigh  thirty  years  ago,  but  it's  warmer  yet  with 
human  feelings  than  any  of  your  damned  charity 
hot-water  bottles."  Suddenly  the  harsh  gasping 
voice  was  stilled  in  death  and  I  awaited  the 
doctor's  coming  shaken  and  horrified-. 

The  lack  of  municipal  regulation  already  referred 
to  was,  in  the  early  days  of  Hull-House,  paralleled 
by  the  inadequacy  of  the  charitable  efforts  of  the 
city  and  an  unfounded  optimism  that  there  was  no 
real  poverty  among  us.  Tw^enty  years  ago  there 
was  no  Charity  Organization  Society  in  Chicago 
and  the  Visiting  Nurse  Association  had  not  yet 
begun  its  beneficent  work,  while  the  relief  societies, 
although  conscientiously  administered,  w^ere  inade- 
quate in  extent  and  antiquated  in  method. 

As  social  reformers  gave  themselves  over  to  dis- 
cussion of  general  principles,  so  the  poor  invariably 
accused  poverty  itself  of  their  destruction.     I  re- 


PROBLEMS   OF   POVERTY  159 

call  a  certain  Mrs.  Moran,  who  was  returning  one 
rainy  day  from  the  office  of  the  county  agent  with 
her  arms  full  of  paper  bags  containing  beans  and 
flour  which  alone  lay  between  her  children  and 
starvation.  Although  she  had  no  money  she 
boarded  a  street  car  in  order  to  save  her  booty 
from  complete  destruction  by  the  rain,  and  as  the 
burst  bags  dropped  ''flour  on  the  ladies'  dresses" 
and  ''beans  all  over  the  place,"  she  was  sharply  rep- 
rimanded by  the  conductor,  who  was  further  ex- 
asperated when  he  discovered  she  had  no  fare.  He 
put  her  off,  as  she  had  hoped  he  would,  almost  in 
front  of  Hull-House.  She  related  to  us  her  state  of 
mind  as  she  stepped  off  the  car  and  saw  the  last  of 
her  wares  disappearing ;  she  admitted  she  forgot 
the  proprieties  and  "cursed  a  little,"  but,  curiously 
enough,  she  pronounced  her  malediction,  not  against 
the  rain  nor  the  conductor,  nor  yet  against  the 
worthless  husband  who  had  been  sent  up  to  the 
city  prison,  but,  true  to  the  Chicago  spirit  of  the 
moment,  wxnt  to  the  r^gtnf  the  matter  and  roundly 

"cursed  poverty."        ^T^" ~ — ^ 

This  spirit  of  generalization  and  lack  of  organ- 
ization among  the  charitable  forces  of  the  city  was 
painfully  revealed  in  that  terrible  w^inter  after  the 
World's  Fair,  when  the  general  financial  depression 
throughout  the  country  was  much  intensified  in 
Chicago  by  the  numbers  of  unemployed  stranded 
at  the  close  of  the  exposition.  When  the  first  cold 
weather   came   the   police   stations    and   the   very 


i6o    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

corridors  of  the  city  hall  were  crowded  by  men 
who  could  afford  no  other  lodging.  They  made 
huge  demonstrations  on  the  lake  front,  reminding 
one  of  the  London  gatherings  in  TvaialgSiT  SqusLve. 
It  was  the  winter  in  which  Mr.  Stead  wrote  hfs 
indictment  of  Chicago.  I  can  vividly  recall  his 
visits  to  Hull-House,  some  of  them  between  eleven 
and  twelve  o'clock  at  night,  when  he  would  come 
in  wet  and  hungry  from  an  investigation  of  the 
levee  district,  and,  while  he  was  drinking  hot  choc- 
olate before  an  open  fire,  would  relate  in  one  of  his 
curious  monologues,  his  experience  as  an  out-of- 
door  laborer  standing  in  line  without  an  overcoat 
for  two  hours  in  the  sleet,  that  he  might  have  a 
chance  to  sweep  the  streets  ;  or  his  adventures  with 
a  crook,  who  mistook  him  for  one  of  his  own  kind 
and  offered  him  a  place  as  an  agent  for  a  gambling 
house,  which  he  promptly  accepted.  Mr.  Stead 
was  much  impressed  with  the  mixed  goodness  in 
Chicago,  the  lack  of  rectitude  in  many  high  places, 
the  simple  kindness  of  the  most  wretched  to  each 
other.  Before  he  published  "If  Christ  Came  to 
Chicago"  he  made  his  attempt  to  rally  the  diverse 
moral  forces  of  the  city  in  a  huge  mass  meeting, 
which  resulted  in  a  temporary  organization,  later 
developing  into  the  Civic  Federation.  I  was  a 
member  of  the  committee  of  five  appointed  to 
carry  out  the  suggestions  made  in  this  remarkable 
meeting,  and  our  first  concern  was  to  appoint  a 
committee    to    deal    with    the    unemployed.     But 


PROBLEMS   OF   POVERTY  i6i 

when  has  a  committee  ever  dealt  satisfactorily  with 
the  unemployed  ?  Relief  stations  were  opened  in 
various  parts  of  the  city,  temporary  lodging  houses 
were  established,  Hull-House  undertaking  to  lodge 
the  homeless  women  who  could  be  received  nowhere 
else ;  employment  stations  were  opened  giving  sew- 
ing to  the  women,  and  street  sweeping  for  the  men 
was  organized.  It  was  in  connection  with  the 
latter  that  the  perplexing  question  of  the  danger  of 
permanently  lowering  wages  at  such  a  crisis,  in  the 
praiseworthy  effort  to  bring  speedy  relief,  was 
brought  home  to  me.  I  insisted  that  it  was  better 
to  have  the  men  work  half  a  day  for  seventy-five 
cents  than  a  whole  day  for  a  dollar,  better  that  they 
should  earn  three  dollars  in  two  days  than  in  three 
days.  I  resigned  from  the  street  cleaning  com- 
mittee in  dispair  of  making  the  rest  of  the  com- 
mittee understand  that,  as  our  real  object  was  not 
street  cleaning  but  the  help  of  the  unemployed,  we 
must  treat  the  situation  in  such  wise  that  the  men 
would  not  be  worse  off  when  they  returned  to  their 
normal  occupations.  The  discussion  opened  up 
situations  new  to  me  and  carried  me  far  afield  in 
perhaps  the  most  serious  economic  reading  I  have 
ever  done. 

A  beginning  also  was  then  made  toward  a  Bureau 
of  Organized  Charities,  the  main  office  being  put  in 
charge  of  a  young  man  recently  come  from  Boston, 
who  lived  at  Hull-House.  But  to  employ  scientific 
methods  for  the  first  time  at  such  a  moment  in- 


i62     TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

\  jlved  difficulties,  and  the  most  painful  episode  of 
the  winter  for  me  came  from  an  attempt  on  my  part 
to  conform  to  carefully  received  instructions.  A 
shipping  clerk  whom  I  had  known  for  a  long  time 
had  lost  his  place,  as  so  many  people  had  that  year, 
and  came  to  the  relief  station  established  at  Hull- 
House  four  or  five  times  to  secure  help  for  his 
family.  I  told  him  one  day  of  the  opportunity  for 
work  on  the  drainage  canal  and  intimated  that  if 
any  employment  were  obtainable,  he  ought  to  ex- 
haust that  possibility  before  asking  for  help.  The 
man  replied  that  he  had  always  worked  indoors  and 
that  he  could  not  endure  outside  work  in  winter. 
I  am  grateful  to  remember  that  I  was  too  uncertain 
to  be  severe,  although  I  held  to  my  instructions. 
He  did  not  come  again  for  relief,  but  worked  for 
two  days  digging  on  the  canal,  where  he  contracted 
pneumonia  and  died  a  week  later.  I  have  never 
lost  trace  of  the  two  little  children  he  left  behind 
him,  although  I  cannot  see  them  without  a  bitter 
consciousness  that  it  was  at  their  expense  I  learned 
that  life  cannot  be  administered  by  definite  rules 
and  regulations  ;  that  wisdom  to  deal  with  a  man's 
difficulties  comes  only  through  some  knowledge  of 
his  life  and  habits  as  a  whole ;  and  that  to  treat  an 
isolated  episode  is  almost  sure  to  invite  blundering. 
It  was  also  during  this  winter  that  I  became  per- 
manently impressed  with  the  kindness  of  the  poor 
to  each  other ;  the  woman  who  lives  upstairs  will 
willingly  share  her  breakfast  with  the  family  below 


PROBLEMS   OF   POVERTY  163 

because  she  knows  they  ''are  hard  up";  the  man 
who  boarded  with  them  last  winter  will  give  a 
month's  rent  because  he  knows  the  father  of  the 
family  is  out  of  work ;  the  baker  across  the  street, 
who  is  fast  being  pushed  to  the  wall  by  his  down- 
town competitors,  will  send  across  three  loaves  of 
stale  bread  because  he  has  seen  the  children  looking 
longingly  into  his  window  and  suspects  they  are 
hungry.  There  are  also  the  families  who,  during 
times  of  business  depression,  are  obliged  to  seek 
help  from  the  county  or  some  benevolent  society, 
but  who  are  themselves  most  anxious  not  to  be  con- 
founded with  the  pauper  class,  w4th  whom  indeed 
they  do  not  in  the  least  belong.  Charles  Booth, 
in  his  brilliant  chapter  on  the  unemployed,  expresses 
regret  that  the  problems  of  the  working  class  are 
so  often  confounded  with  the  problems  of  the  in- 
efficient and  the  idle,  that  although  working  people 
live  in  the  same  street  with  those  in  need  of  charity, 
to  thus  confound  two  problems  is  to  render  the 
solution    of    both    impossible. 

I  remember  one  family  in  which  the  father  had 
been  out  of  work  for  this  same  winter,  most  of  the 
furniture  had  been  pawned,  and  as  the  w^orn-out 
shoes  could  not  be  replaced  the  children  could  not 
go  to  school.  The  mother  was  ill  and  barely  able 
to  come  for  the  supplies  and  medicines.  Two  years 
later  she  invited  me  to  supper  one  Sunday  evening 
in  the  little  home  which  had  been  completely  re- 
stored, and  she  gave  as  a  reason  for  the  invitation 


1 64    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

that  she  couldn't  bear  to  have  me  remember  them 
as  they  had  been  during  that  one  winter,  which  she 
insisted  had  been  unique  in  her  twelve  years  of 
married  life.  She  said  that  it  was  as  if  she  had  met 
me,  not  as  I  am  ordinarily,  but  as  I  should  appear 


misshapen  with  rheumatism  or  with  a  face  dis- 
torted by  neuralgic  pain;  that  it  was  not  fair  to 
judge  poor  people  that  way.  She  perhaps  un- 
consciously illustrated  the  difference  between  the 
relief-station  relation  to  the  poor  and  the  Settle- 
ment relation  to   its   neighbors,  the  latter  wishing 


PROBLEMS   OF   POVERTY        ,  165, 

to  know  them  through  all  the  varying  conditions  of 
life,  to  stand  by  when  they  are  in  distress,  but  by 
no  means  to  drop  intercourse  with  them  when 
normal  prosperity  has  returned,  enabling  the  rela- 
tion to  become  more  social  and  free  from  economk^ 
disturbance. 

Possibly  something  of  the  same  effort  has  to  be 
made  within  the  Settlement  itself  to  keep  its  own 
sense  of  proportion  in  regard  to  the  relation  of  the 
crowded  city  quarter  to  the  rest  of  the  country. 
It  was  in  the  spring  following  this  terrible  winter, 
during  a  journey  to  meet  lecture  engagements  in 
California,  that  I  found  myself  amazed  at  the  large 
stretches  of  open  country  and  prosperous  towns 
through  which  we  passed  day  by  day,  whose  ex- 
istence I  had  quite  forgotten. 

In  the  latter  part  of  the  summer  of  1895,  I  served 
as  a  member  on  a  commission  appointed  by  the 
mayor  of  Chicago,  to  investigate  conditions  in  the 
county  poorhouse,  public  attention  having  become 
centered  on  it  through  one  of  those  distressing 
stories,  which  exaggerates  the  wrong  in  a  public 
institution  while  at  the  same  time  it  reveals  condi- 
tions which  need  to  be  rectified.  However  neces- 
sary publicity  is  for  securing  reformed  administra- 
tion, however  useful  such  exposures  may  be  for 
political  purposes,  the  whole  is  attended  by  such  a 
waste  of  the  most  precious  human  emotions,  by 
such  a  tearing  of  living  tissue,  that  it  can  scarcely 
be  endured.     Every  time  I  entered  Hull-House  dur- 


i66.  TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

ing  the  days  of  the  investigation,  I  would  find  wait- 
ing for  me  from  twenty  to  thirty  people  whose 
friends  and  relatives  were  in  the  suspected  insti- 
tution, all  in  such  acute  distress  of  mind  that  to 
see  them  was  to  look  upon  the  victims  of  deliberate 
torture.  In  most  cases  my  visitor  would  state  that 
it  seemed  impossible  to  put  their  invalids  in  any 
other  place,  but  if  these  stories  were  true,  something 
must  be  done.  Many  of  the  patients  were  taken 
out  only  to  be  returned  after  a  few  days  or  weeks 
to  meet  the  sullen  hostility  of  their  attendants  and 
with  their  own  attitude  changed  from  confidence 
to  timidity  and  alarm. 

This  piteous  dependence  of  the  poor  upon  the 
good  will  of  public  officials  was  made  clear  to  us 
in  an  early  experience  with  a  peasant  woman 
straight  from  the  fields  of  Germany,  whom  we  met 
during  our  first  six  months  at  Hull-House.  Her 
four  years  in  America  had  been  spent  in  patiently 
carrying  water  up  and  down  two  flights  of  stairs, 
and  in  washing  the  heavy  flannel  suits  of  iron 
foundry  workers.  For  this  her  pay  had  averaged 
thirty-five  cents  a  day.  Three  of  her  daughters 
had  fallen  victims  to  the  vice  of  the  city.  The 
mother  was  bewildered  and  distressed,  but  under- 
stood nothing.  We  were  able  to  induce  the  be- 
trayer of  one  daughter  to  marry  her;  the  second, 
after  a  tedious  lawsuit,  supported  his  child ;  with 
the  third  we  were  able  to  do  nothing.  This  woman 
is  now  living  with  her  family  in  a  little  house  seven- 


PROBLEMS  OF  POVERTY  167 

teen  miles  from  the  city.  She  has  made  two  pay- 
ments on  her  land  and  is  a  lesson  to  all  beholders 
as  she  pastures  her  cow  up  and  down  the  railroad 
tracks  and  makes  money  from  her  ten  acres.  She 
did  not  need  charity  for  she  had  an  immense  ca- 
pacity for  hard  work,  but  she  sadly  needed  the 
service  of  the  State's  attorney  office,  enforcing  the 
laws  designed  for  the  protection  of  such  girls  as  her 
daughters. 

We  early  found  ourselves  spending  many  hours  in 
efforts  to  secure  support  for  deserted  women,  in- 
surance for  bewildered  widows,  damages  for  injured 
operators,  furniture  from  the  clutches  of  the  in- 
stallment store.  The  Settlement  is  valuable  as  an 
information  and  interpretation  bureau.  It  con- 
stantly acts  between  the  various  institutions  of 
the  city  and  the  people  for  whose  benefit  these  in- 
stitutions were  erected.  The  hospitals,  the  county 
agencies,  and  State  asylums  are  often  but  vague 
rumors  to  the  people  who  need  them  most.  Another 
function  of  the  Settlement  to  its  neighborhood  re- 
sembles that  of  the  big  brother  whose  mere  presence 
on  the  playground  protects  the  little  one  from 
bullies. 

We  early  learned  to  know  the  children  of  hard 
driven  mothers  who  went  out  to  work  all  day, 
sometimes  leaving  the  little  things  in  the  casual 
care  of  a  neighbor,  but  often  locking  them  into  their 
tenement  rooms.  The  first  three  crippled  children 
we  encountered  in  the  neighborhood  had  all  been 


i68    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


injured  while  their  mothers  were  at  work  :  one  had 
fallen  out  of  a  third-story  window,  another  had 
been  burned,  and  the  third  had  a  curved  spine  due 
to  the  fact  that  for  three  years  he  had  been  tied 
all  day  long  to  the  leg  of  the  kitchen  table,  only 
released  at  noon  by  his  older  brother  who  hastily 
ran  in  from  a  neighboring  factory  to  share  his 
lunch  with  him.  When  the  hot  weather  came  the 
restless  children  could  not  brook  the  confinement 
of  the  stuify  rooms,  and,  as  it  was  not  considered 

safe  to  leave  the 
doors  open  be- 
cause of  sneak 
thieves,  many 
of  the  children 
were  locked 
out.  During 
our  first  sum- 
mer an  increas- 
ing number  of  these  poor  little  mites  would 
wander  into  the  cool  hallway  of  Hull-House.  We 
kept  them  there  and  fed  them  at  noon,  in  return 
for  which  we  were  sometimes  offered  a  hot  penny 
which  had  been  held  in  a  tight  little  fist  ''ever 
since  mother  left  this  morning,  to  buy  some- 
thing to  eat  with."  Out  of  kindergarten  hours 
our  little  guests  noisily  enjoyed  the  hospitality 
of  our  bedrooms  under  the  so-called  care  of 
any  resident  who  volunteered  to  keep  an  eye 
on    them,    but    later    they    were    moved    into    a 


PROBLEMS   OF   POVERTY  169 

neighboring    apartment    under    more    systematic 
supervision. 

Hull-House  was  thus  committed  to  a  day  nursery 
which  we  sustained  for  sixteen  years  first  in  a  little 
cottage  on  a  side  street  and  then  in  a  building  de-^ 
signed  for  its  use  called  the  Children's  House.  It 
is  now  carried  on  by  the  United  Charities  of  Chi- 
cago in  a  finely  equipped  building  on  our  block, 
where  the  immigrant  mothers  are  cared  for  as  well 
as  the  children,  and  where  they  are  taught  th< 
things  which  will  make  life  in  America  more  pos- 
sible. Our  early  day  nursery  brought  us  into 
■natural  relations  with  the  poorest  women  of  th( 
neighborhood,  many  of  whom  were  bearing  the 
burden  of  dissolute  and  incompetent  husbands  in 
addition  to  the  support  of  their  children.  Some 
of  them  presented  an  impressive  manifestation  of 
that  miracle  of  affection  which  outlives  abuse, 
n^eglect,  and  crime,  —  the  affection  which  cannot  be 
plucked  from  the  heart  where  it  has  lived,  although 
it  may  serve  only  to  torture  and  torment.  ''Has 
your  husband  come  back  .^"  you  inquire  of  Mrs.  S., 
whom  you  have  known  for  eight  years  as  an  over- 
worked woman  bringing  her  three  delicate  children 
every  morning  to  the  nursery  ;  she  is  bent  under  the 
double  burden  of  earning  the  money  which  supports 
them  and  giving  them  the  tender  care  which  alone 
keeps  them  alive.  The  oldest  two  children  have 
at  last  gone  to  work,  and -Mrs.  S.  has  allowed  her- 
£  elf  the  luxury  of  staying  at  home  two  days  a  week. 


I70    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

And  now  the  worthless  husband  is  back  again — • 
the  "gentlemanly  gambler"  type  who,  through  all 
vicissitudes,  manages  to  present  a  white  shirtfront 
and  a  gold  watch  to  the  world,  but  who  is  dissolute, 
idle,  and  extravagant.    You  dread  to  think  how  much 
his  presence  will  increase  the  drain  upon  the  family 
exchequer,  and  you  know  that  he  stayed  away  until 
he  was  certain  that  the  children  were  old  enough  to 
earn   money  for  his   luxuries.     Mrs.    S.   does   not 
pretend  to  take  his  return  lightly,  but  she  replies, 
in  all  seriousness  and  simplicity,  "You  know  rrAy 
feeling    for    him    has    never    changed.     You    may 
think  me  foolish,  but  I  was  always  proud  of  hi^f 
good  looks  and  educated  appearance.     I  was  lonr'    ! 
and  homesick  during  those  eight  years  when 
children  were  little  and  needed  so  much  doctorin^  | 
but  I  could  never  bring  myself  to  feel  hard  toward 
him,  and  I  used  to  pray  the  good  Lord  to  keep  hrm 
from  harm  and  bring  him  back  to  us  ;   so,  of  cours^^e, 
I'm  thankful  now."     She  passes  on  with  a  dignitW 
which   gives  one   a   new  sense  of  the   security  o  f 
affection. 

I  recall  a  similar  case  of  a  woman  who  had  sup- 
ported her  three  children  for  five  years,  during  which 
time  her  dissolute  husband  constantly  demanded 
money  for  drink  and  kept  her  perpetually  worried 
and  intimidated.  One  Saturday,  before  the 
"blessed  Easter,"  he  came  back  from  a  long  de- 
bauch, ragged  and  filthy,  but  in  a  state  of  lachry- 
mose repentance.     The  poor  wife  received  him  a5/ 1 

I 


) 


PROBLEMS  OF   POVERTY  171 

a  returned  prodigal,  believed  that  his  remorse 
would  prove  lasting,  and  felt  sure  that  if  she  and 
the  children  went  to  church  with  him  on  Easter 
Sunday  and  he  could  be  induced  to  take  the  pledge 
before  the  priest,  all  their  troubles  would  be  ended. 
After  hours  of  vigorous  effort  and  the  expenditure 
of  all  her  savings,  he  finally  sat  on  the  front  door- 
step the  morning  of  Easter  Sunday,  bathed,  shaved 
and  arrayed  in  a  fine  new  suit  of  clothes.  She 
left  him  sitting  there  in  the  reluctant  spring  sun- 
shine while  she  finished  washing  and  dressing  the 
children.  When  she  finally  opened  the  front  door 
with  the  three  shining  children  that  they  might  all 
set  forth  together,  the  returned  prodigal  had  dis- 
appeared, and  was  not  seen  again  until  midnight, 
when  he  came  back  in  a  glorious  state  of  intoxica- 
tion from  the  proceeds  of  his  pawned  clothes  and 
clad  once  more  in  the  dingiest  attire.  She  took 
him  in  without  comment,  only  to  begin  again  the 
wretched  cycle.  There  were  of  course  instances 
of  the  criminal  husband  as  well  as  of  the  merely 
vicious.  I  recall  one  woman  who,  during  seven 
years,  never  missed  a  visiting  day  at  the  peniten- 
tiary when  she  might  see  her  husband,  and  whose 
little  children  in  the  nursery  proudly  reported  the 
messages  from  father  with  no  notion  that  he  was  in 
disgrace,  so  absolutely  did  they  reflect  the  gallant 
spirit  of  their  mother. 

While  one  was  filled  with  admiration  for  these 
heroic  women,  something  was  also  to  be  said  for 


172    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

some  of  the  husbands,  for  the  sorry  men  who,  for 
one  reason  or  another,  had  failed  in  the  struggle  of 
life.  Sometimes  this  failure  was  purely  economic 
and  the  men  were  competent  to  give  the  children, 
whom  they  were  not  able  to  support,  the  care  and 
guidance  and  even  education  which  were  of  the 
highest  value.  Only  a  few  months  ago  I  met  upon 
the  street  one  of  the  early  nursery  mothers  who 
for  five  years  had  been  living  in  another  part  of  the 
city,  and  in  response  to  my  query  as  to  the  welfare 
of  her  five  children,  she  bitterly  replied,  ''All  of 
them  except  Mary  have  been  arrested  at  one  time 
or  another,  thank  you."  In  reply  to  my  remark 
that  I  thought  her  husband  had  always  had  such 
admirable  control  over  them,  she  burst  out,  "That 
has  been  the  whole  trouble.  I  got  tired  taking 
care  of  him  and  didn't  believe  that  his  laziness  was 
all  due  to  his  health,  as  he  said,  so  I  left  him  and 
.said  that  I  would  support  the  children,  but  not  him. 
From  that  minute  the  trouble  with  the  four  boys 
began.  I  never  knew  what  they  were  doing,  and 
after  every  sort  of  a  scrape  I  finally  put  Jack  and 
the  twins  into  institutions  where  I  pay  for  them. 
Joe  has  gone  to  work  at  last,  but  with  a  disgraceful 
record  behind  him.  I  tell  you  I  ain't  so  sure  that 
because  a  woman  can  make  big  money  that  she 
can  be  both  father  and  mother  to  her  children." 

As  I  walked  on,  I  could  but  wonder  in  which  par- 
ticular we  are  most  stupid,  —  to  judge  a  man's  worth 
so  solely  by  his  wage-earning  capacity  that  a  good 


PROBLEMS   OF   POVERTY  173 

wife  feels  justified  in  leaving  him,  or  in  holding 
fast  to  that  wretched  delusion  that  a  woman  can 
both  support  and  nurture  her  children. 

One  of  the  most  piteous  revelations  of  the  futility 
of  the  latter  attempt  came  to  me  through  the 
mother  of  "Goosie,"  as  the  children  for  years  called 
a  little  boy  who,  because  he  was  brought  to  the 
nursery  wrapped  up  in  his  mother's  shawl,  always 
had  his  hair  filled  with  the  down  and  small  feathers 
from  the  feather  brush  factory  where  she  worked.  . 
One  March  morning,  Goosie's  mother  was  hanging 
out  the  washing  on  a  shed  roof  at  six  o'clock,  doing 
it  thus  early  before  she  left  for  the  factory.  Five- 
year-old  Goosie  was  trotting  at  her  heels  handing 
her  clothespins,  when  he  was  suddenly  blown  off 
the  roof  by  the  high  wind  into  the  alley  below. 
His  neck  was  broken  by  the  fall  and  as  he  lay  pite- 
ous and  limp  on  a  pile  of  frozen  refuse,  his  mother 
cheerily  called  him  to  *' climb  up  again,"  so  confi-  ^ 
dent  do  overworked  mothers  become  that  their 
children  cannot  get  hurt.  After  the  funeral,  as 
the  poor  mother  sat  in  the  nursery  postponing  the 
moment  when  she  must  go  back  to  her  empty 
rooms,  I  asked  her,  in  a  futile  effort  to  be  of  comfort, 
if  there  was  anything  more  we  could  do  for  her. 
The  overworked,  sorrow-stricken  woman  looked 
up  and  replied,  ''If  you  could  give  me  my  wages 
for  to-morrow,  I  would  not  go  to  work  in  the  factory 
at  all.  I  would  like  to  stay  at  home  all  day  and 
hold  the  baby.     Goosie  was  always  asking  me  to 


174    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

take  him  and  I  never  had  any  time."  This  state- 
ment revealed  the  condition  of  many  nursery 
mothers  who  are  obliged  to  forego  the  joys  and 
solaces  which  belong  to  even  the  most  poverty- 
stricken.  The  long  hours  of  factory  labor  neces- 
sary for  earning  the  support  of  a  child  leave  no 
time  for  the  tender  care  and  caressing  which  may 
enrich  the  life  of  the  most  piteous  baby. 

With  all  of  the  efforts  made  by  modern  society  to 
nurture  and  educate  the  young,  how  stupid  it  is  to 
permit  the  mothers  of  young  children  to  spend 
themselves  in  the  coarser  work  of  the  world  !  It  is 
curiously  inconsistent  that  with  the  emphasis 
which  this  generation  has  placed  upon  the  mother 
and  upon  the  prolongation  of  infancy,  we  con- 
stantly allow  the  waste  of  this  most  precious  ma- 
terial. I  cannot  recall  without  indignation  a  recent 
experience.  I  was  detained  late  one  evening  in  an 
ofRce  building  by  a  prolonged  committee  meeting 
of  the  Board  of  Education.  As  I  came  out  at 
eleven  o'clock,  I  met  in  the  corridor  of  the  four- 
teenth floor  a  woman  whom  I  knew,  on  her  knees 
scrubbing  the  marble  tiling.  As  she  straightened 
up  to  greet  me,  she  seemed  so  wet  from  her  feet  up 
to  her  chin,  that  I  hastily  inquired  the  cause.  Her 
reply  was  that  she  left  home  at  five  o'clock  every 
night  and  had  no  opportunity  for  six  hours  to 
nurse  her  baby.  Her  mother's  milk  mingled  with 
the  very  water  with  which  she  scrubbed  the  floors 
until  she  should  return  at  midnight,  heated  and 


PROBLEMS   OF   POVERTY  175 

exhausted,  to  feed  her  screaming  child  with  what 
remained  within  her  breasts. 

These  are  only  a  few  of  the  problems  connected 
with  the  lives  of  the  poorest  people  with  whom  the 
residents  in  a  Settlement  are  constantly  brought  in 
contact. 

I  cannot  close  this  chapter  without  a  reference 
to  that  gallant  company  of  men  and  women  among 
whom  my  acquaintance  is  so  large,  who  are  fairly 
indifferent  to  starvation  itself  because  of  their 
preoccupation  with  higher  ends.  Among  them  are 
visionaries  and  enthusiasts,  unsuccessful  artists, 
writers  and  reformers.  For  many  years  at  Hull- 
House,  we  knew  a  well-bred  German  woman  who 
was  completely  absorbed  in  the  experiment  of 
expressing  musical  phrases  and  melodies  by  means 
of  colors.  Because  she  was  small  and  deformed, 
she  stowed  herself  into  her  trunk  every  night,  where 
she  slept  on  a  canvas  stretched  hammock-wise  from 
the  four  corners  and  her  food  was  of  the  meager- 
est ;  nevertheless  if  a  visitor  left  an  offering  upon 
her  table,  it  was  largely  spent  for  apparatus  or  deli- 
cately colored  silk  floss,  with  which  to  pursue  the 
fascinating  experiment.  Another  sadly  crippled 
old  woman,  the  widow  of  a  sea  captain,  although 
living  almost  exclusively  upon  malted  milk  tablets 
as  affording  a  cheap  form  of  prepared  food,  was 
always  eager  to  talk  of  the  beautiful  illuminated 
manuscripts  she  had  sought  out  in  her  travels  and 
to  show  specimens  of  her  own  work  as  an  illumi- 


176    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

nator.  Still  another  of  these  impressive  old  women 
was  an  inveterate  inventor.  Although  she  had 
seen  prosperous  days  in  England,  when  we  knew 
her,  she  subsisted  largely  upon  the  samples  given 
away  at  the  demonstration  counters  of  the  depart- 
ment stores,  and  on  bits  of  food  which  she  cooked 
on  a  coal  shovel  in  the  furnace  of  the  apartment 
house  whose  basement  back  room  she  occupied. 
Although  her  inventions  were  not  practicable, 
various  experts  to  whom  they  were  submitted  al- 
ways pronounced  them  suggestive  and  ingenious. 
I  once  saw  her  receive  this  complimentary  verdict 
—  "this  ribbon  to  stick  in  her  coat"  —  with  such 
dignity  and  gravity,  that  the  words  of  condolence 
for  her  financial  disappointment,  died  upon  my 
lips. 

These  Indomitable  souls  are  but  three  out  of 
many,  whom  I  might  instance  to  prove  that  those 
who  are  handicapped  in  the  race  for  life's  goods, 
sometimes  play  a  magnificent  trick  upon  the  jade, 
life  herself,  by  ceasing  to  know  whether  or  not  they 
possess  any  of  her  tawdry  goods  and  chattels. 


CHAPTER  IX 

A  Decade  of  Economic  Discussion 

The  Hull-House  residents  were  often  bewildered 
by  the  desire  for  constant  discussion  which  char- 
acterized Chicago  twenty  years  ago,  for  although 
the  residents  in  the  early  Settlements  were  in  many 
cases  young  persons,  w^io  had  sought  relief  from  the 
consciousness  of  social  maladjustment  in  the  "ano- 
dyne of  work"  afforded  by  philanthropic  and  civic 
activities,  their  former  experiences  had  not  thrown 
them  into  company  with  radicals.  The  decade 
between  1 890-1900  was,  in  Chicago,  a  period  of 
propaganda  as  over  against  constructive  social 
effort ;  the  moment  for  marching  and  carrying 
banners,  for  stating  general  principles  and  making 
a  demonstration,  rather  than  the  time  for  uncover- 
ing the  situation  and  for  providing  the  legal  meas- 
ures and  the  civic  organization  through  which  ne'' 
social  hopes  might  make  themselves  felt. 

When  Hull-House  was  established  in  1889,  the 
events  of  the  Haymarket  riot  were  already  two 
years  old,  but  during  that  time  Chicago  had  ap- 
parently gone  through  the  first  period  of  repressive 
measures,  and  in  the  winter  of  1 889-1 890,  by  the 
advice  and  with  the  active  participation  of  its  lead- 

N  177 


'^^ 


178    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

/  ing  citizens,  the  city  had  reached  the  conclusion 
that  the  only  cure  for  the  acts  of  anarchy  was  free 
speech  and  an  open  discussion  of  the  ills  of  which 
the  opponents  of  government  complained.  Great 
open  meetings  were  held  every  Sunday  evening  in 
the  recital  hall  of  the  then  new  auditorium,  pre- 
sided over  by  such  representative  citizens  as  Lyman 
Gage,  and  every  possible  shade  of  opinion  was 
freely  expressed.  A  man  who  spoke  constantly 
at  these  meetings  used  to  be  pointed  out  to  the 
visiting  stranger  as  one  who  had  been  involved 
Y^with  the  group  of  convicted  anarchists,  and  who 
y  doubtless  would  have  been  arrested  and  tried,  but 
for  the  accident  of  his  having  been  in  Milwaukee 
when  the  explosion  occurred.  One  cannot  imagine 
such  meetings  being  held  in  Chicago  to-day,  nor 
that  such  a  man  should  be  encouraged  to  raise  his 
voice  in  a  public  assemblage  presided  over  by  a  lead- 
ing banker.  It  is  hard  to  tell  just  what  change  has 
come  over  our  philosophy  or  over  the  minds  of 
those  citizens  who  were  then  convinced  that  if 
these  conferences  had  been  established  earlier,  the 
Haymarket  riot  and  all  its  sensational  results  might 
have  been  avoided. 

At  any  rate,  there  seemed  a  further  need  for 
smaller  clubs,  where  men  who  differed  widely  in 
their  social  theories  might  meet  for  discussion, 
where  representatives  of  the  various  economic 
schools  might  modify  each  other,  and  at  least  learn 
tolerance  and  the  futility  of  endeavoring  to  con- 


ECONOMIC  DISCUSSION  179 

vince  all  the  world  of  the  truth  of  one  position. 
Fanaticism  is  engendered  only  when  men,  finding 
no  contradiction  to  their  theories,  at  last  believe 
that  the  very  universe  lends  itself  as  an  exemplifi- 
cation of  one  point  of  view.  "The  Working 
People's  Social  Science  Club"  was  organized  at 
Hull-House  in  the  spring  of  1890  by  an  English 
workingman,  and  for  seven  years  it  held  a  weekly 
meeting.  At  eight  o'clock  every  Wednesday  night 
the  secretary  called  to  order  from  forty  to  one  hun- 
dred people ;  a  chairman  for  the  evening  was  elected, 
a  speaker  was  introduced  who  was  allowed  to  talk 
until  nine  o'clock;  his  subject  was  then  thrown 
open  to  discussion  and  a  lively  debate  ensued  until 
ten  o'clock,  at  which  hour  the  meeting  was  declared 
adjourned.  The  enthusiasm  of  this  club  seldom 
lagged.  Its  zest  for  discussion  was  unceasing,  and 
any  attempt  to  turn  it  into  a  study  or  reading  club 
always  met  with  the  strong  disapprobation  of  the 
members. 

In  these  weekly  discussions  in  the  Hull-House 
drawing-room  everything  was  thrown  back  upon 
general  principles  and  all  discussion  save  that  which 
"went  to  the  root  of  things,"  was  impatiently  dis- 
carded as  an  unworthy,  halfway  measure.  I  re- 
call one  evening  in  this  club  when  an  exasperated 
member  had  thrown  out  the  statement  that  "Mr. 
B.  believes  that  socialism  will  cure  the  toothache." 
Mr.  B.  promptly  rose  to  his  feet  and  said  that  it 
certainly  would,  that  when  every  child's  teeth  were 


i8o    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

systematically  cared  for  from  the  beginning,  tooth- 
ache would  disappear  from  the  face  of  the  earth, 
belonging,  as  it  did,  to  the  extinct  competitive 
order,  as  the  black  plague  had  disappeared  from 
the  earth  with  the  ill-regulated  feudal  regime  of  the 
Middle  Ages.  ''But,"  he  added,  ''why  do  we 
spend  time  discussing  trifles  like  the  toothache 
when  great  social  changes  are  to  be  considered 
which  will  of  themselves  reform  these  minor  ills  ?" 
Even  the  man  who  had  been  humorous,  fell  into  the 
solemn  tone  of  the  gathering.  It  was,  perhaps,  here 
that  the  socialist  surpassed  every  one  else  in  the 
fervor  of  economic  discussion.  He  was  usually  a 
German  or  a  Russian  with  a  turn  for  logical  presen- 
/  tation,  who  saw  in  the  concentration  of  capital  and 
/  the  growth  of  monoplies  an  inevitable  transition  to 
V^the  socialistic  state.  He  pointed  out  that  the  con- 
centration of  capital  in  fewer  hands  but  increased 
the  mass  of  those  whose  interests  were  opposed  to  a 
maintenance  of  its  power,  and  vastly  simplified  its 
final  absorption  by  the  community  ;  that  monopoly 
"when  it  is  finished  doth  bring  forth  socialism." 
Opposite  to  him,  springing  up  in  ever}^  discussion 
was  the  individualist,  or,  as  the  socialist  called  him, 
the  anarchist,  who  insisted  that  we  shall  never  se- 
cure just  human  relations  until  we  have  equality  of 
opportunity ;  that  the  sole  function  of  the  state  is 
to  maintain  the  freedom  of  each,  guarded  by  the 
like  freedom  of  all,  in  order  that  each  man  may  be 
able  to  work  out  the  problems  of  his  own  existence. 


ECONOMIC  DISCUSSION 


i8i 


That  first  winter  was  within  three  years  of  the 
Henry  George  campaign  in  New  York,  when  his 
adherents  all  over  the  country  were  carrying  on  a 
successful  and  effective  propaganda.  When  Henry 
George  himself  came  to 
Hull-House  one  Sunday 
afternoon,  the  gymna- 
sium which  was  already 
crowded  with  men  to 
hear  Father  Huntington's 
address  on  ''Why  should 
a  free  thinker  believe  in 
Christ,"  fairly  rocked  on 
its  foundations  under  the 
enthusiastic  and  pro- 
longed applause  which 
greeted  this  great  leader 
and  constantly  inter- 
rupted his  stirring  ad- 
dress, filled,  as  all  of  his 
speeches  were,  with  high 
moral  enthusiasm  and  " " 
humanitarian  fervor.    Of  j"  ,       "^i'. 

the  remarkable  congresses  ' 

held  in  connection  w^ith  the  World's  Fair,  perhaps 
those  inaugurated  by  the  advocates  of  single  tax 
exceeded  all  others  in  vital  enthusiasm.  It  was 
possibly  significant  that  all  discussions  in  the  de- 
partment of  social  science  had  to  be  organized 
by  partisans  in  separate  groups.      The  very  com- 


i82    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

mittee  itself  on  social  science  composed  of  Chicago 
citizens,  of  whom  I  was  one,  changed  from  week 
to  week,  as  partisan  members  had  their  feelings 
hurt  because  their  causes  did  not  receive  ''due  rec- 
ognition." And  yet  in  the  same  building  ad- 
herents of  the  most  diverse  religious  creeds,  eastern 
and  western,  met  in  amity  and  good  fellowship. 
Did  it  perhaps  indicate  that  their  presentation  of 
the  eternal  problems  of  life  were  cast  in  an  older 
and  less  sensitive  mold  than  this  presentation  in 
terms  of  social  experience,  or  was  it  rather  that  the 
new  social  science  was  not  yet  a  science  at  all  but 
merely  a  name  under  cover  of  which  we  might  dis- 
cuss the  perplexing  problems  of  the  industrial  situa- 
tion ?  Certainly  the  difficulties  of  our  committee 
were  not  minimized  by  the  fact  that  the  then  new 
science  of  sociology  had  not  yet  defined  its  own  field. 
The  University  of  Chicago,  opened  only  the  year  be- 
fore the  World's  Fair,  was  the  first  great  institution 
of  learning  to  institute  a  department  of  sociology. 

In  the  meantime  the  Hull-House  Social  Science 
Club  grew  in  numbers  and  fervor  as  various  dis- 
tinguished people  who  were  visiting  the  World's 
Fair  came  to  address  it.  I  recall  a  brilliant  French- 
woman who  was  filled  with  amazement  because 
one  of  the  shabbiest  men  reflected  a  reading  of 
Schopenhauer.  She  considered  the  statement  of  an- 
other member  most  remarkable  —  that  when  he  saw 
a  carriage  driving  through  the  streets  occupied  by  a 
capitalist  who  was  no  longer  even  an  entrepreneur, 


ECONOMIC  DISCUSSION  183 

he  felt  quite  as  sure  that  his  days  were  numbered 
and  that  his  very  lack  of  function  to  society  would 
speedily  bring  him  to  extinction,  as  he  did  when  he 
saw  a  drunkard  reeling  along  the  same  street.     _^ 

The  club  at  any  rate  convinced  the  residents  that ' 
no  one  so  poignantly  realizes  the  failures  in  the  social 
structure  as  the  man  at  the  bottom,  who  has  been 
most  directly  in  contact  with  those  failures  and  has 
suffered  most.  I  recall  the  shrewd  comments  of  a 
certain  sailor  who  had  known  the  disinherited  in 
every  country ;  of  a  Russian  who  had  served  his 
term  in  Siberia  ;  of  an  old  Irishman  who  called  him- 
self an  atheist  but  who  in  moments  of  excitement 
always  blamed  the  good  Lord  for  '' setting  su- 
pinely" when  the  world  was  so  horribly  out  of 
joint. 

It  was  doubtless  owing  largely  to  this  club  that 
Hull-House  contracted  its  early  reputation  for 
radicalism.  Visitors  refused  to  distinguish  be- 
tween the  sentiments  expressed  by  its  members  in 
the  heat  of  discussion  and  the  opinions  held  by  the 
residents  themselves.  At  that  moment  in  Chicago 
the  radical  of  every  shade  of  opinion  was  vigorous 
and  dogmatic;  of  the  sort  that  could  not  resign 
himself  to  the  slow  march  of  human  improvement ; 
of  the  type  who  knew  exactly  ''in  what  part  of  the 
world  Utopia  standeth." 

During  this  decade  Chicago  seemed  divided  into 
two  classes  ;  those  who  held  that  "business  is  busi- 
ness" and  who  were  therefore  annoyed  at  the  very 


1 84    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

notion  of  social  control,  and  the  radicals,  who 
claimed  that  nothing  could  be  done  to  really  moral- 
ize the  industrial  situation  until  society  should  be 
reorganized. 

A  Settlement  is  above  all  a  place  for  enthusiasms, 
a  spot  to  which  those  who  have  a  passion  for  the 
equalization  of  human  joys  and  opportunities  are 
early  attracted.  It  is  this  type  of  mind  which  is  in 
itself  so  often  obnoxious  to  the  man  of  conquering 
business  faculty,  to  whom  the  practical  world  of 
affairs  seems  so  supremely  rational  that  he  would 
Lever  vote  to  change  the  type  of  it  even  if  he  could. 
The  man  of  social  enthusiasm  is  to  him  an  annoy- 
ance and  an  affront.  He  does  not  like  to  hear  him 
talk  and  considers  him  per  se  ''unsafe."  Such  a 
business  man  would  admit,  as  an  abstract  proposi- 
tion, that  society  is  susceptible  of  modification  and 
would  even  agree  that  all  human  institutions  imply 
progressive  development,  but  at  the  same  time  he 
deeply  distrusts  those  who  seek  to  reform  existing 
conditions.  There  is  a  certain  common-sense 
foundation  for  this  distrust,  for  too  often  the  re- 
former is  the  rebel  who  defies  things  as  they  are, 
because  of  the  restraints  which  they  impose  upon 
his  individual  desires  rather  than  because  of  the 
general  defects  of  the  system.  When  such  a  rebel 
poses  for  a  reformer,  his  shortcomings  are  heralded 
to  the  world,  and  his  downfall  is  cherished  as  an 
awful  warning  to  those  who  refuse  to  worship  ''the 
god  of  things  as  they  are." 


ECONOMIC  DISCUSSION  185 

And  yet  as  I  recall  the  members  of  this  early 
club,  even  those  who  talked  the  most  and  the  least 
rationally,  seem  to  me  to  have  been  particularly 
kindly  and  ''safe."  The  most  pronounced  anar- 
chist among  them  has  long  since  become  a  convert 
to  a  religious  sect,  holding  Buddhistic  tenets  which 
imply  little  food  and  a  distrust  of  all  action;  he 
has  become  a  wraith  of  his  former  self  but  he  still 
retains  his  kindly  smile. 

In  the  discussion  of  these  themes,  Hull-House  was 
of  course  quite  as  much  under  the  suspicion  of  one 
side  as  the  other.     I  remember  one  night  when  I 
addressed  a  club  of  secularists,  which  met  at  the 
corner  of  South  Halsted  and  Madison  streets,  a 
rough  looking  man  called  out:    "You  are  all  right 
now,  but,  mark    my  words,  when  you   are   subsi 
dized  by  the  millionaires,  you  will  be  afraid  to  tal 
like  this."     The  defense  of  free  speech  was  a  sens! 
tive  point  with  me,  and  I  quickly  replied  that  whil 
I  did  not  intend  to  be  subsidized  by  millionaire 
neither  did  I  propose  to  be  bullied  by  workingmeri 
and  that  I  should  state  my  honest  opinion  without 
consulting  either  of  them.     To  my  surprise,   th 
audience  of  radicals  broke  into  applause,  and  th 
discussion  turned  upon  the  need  of  resisting  tyr- 
anny wherever  found,   if    democratic    institution^ 
were  to  endure.     This  desire  to  bear  independent\ 
witness  to  social  righteousness  often  resulted  in  a  \ 
sense  of  compromise  difficult  to  endure,  and  at  many   ] 
times  it  seemed  to  me  that  we  were  destined  to   / 


^ 


1 86    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 


alienate  everybody.)  I  should  have  been  most 
grateful  ■a'T'tliaTr^firne  to  accept  the  tenets  of  so- 
cialism, and  I  conscientiously  made  my  effort, 
both  by  reading  and  by  many  discussions  with  the 
comrades.  I  found  that  I  could  easily  give  an 
affirmative  answer  to  the  heated  question  "Don't 
you  see  that  just  as  the  hand  mill  created  a  society 
with  a  feudal  lord,  so  the  steam  mill  creates  a 
society  with  an  industrial  capitalist  r'  But  it  was 
a  little  harder  to  give  an  affirmative  reply  to  the 
proposition  that  the  social  relation  thus  established 
proceeds  to  create  principles,  ideas  and  categories 
as  merely  historical  and  transitory  products. 

Of  course  I  use  the  term  "  socialism  "  technically 
and  do  not  wish  to  confuse  it  with  the  growing  sensi- 
tiveness which  recognizes  that  no  personal  comfort 
nor  individual  development  can  compensate  a  man 
for  the  misery  of  his  neighbors,  nor  with  the  in- 
creasing conviction  that  social  arrangements  can  be 
transformed  through  man's  conscious  and  deliberate 
effort.  Such  a  definition  would  not  have  been 
accepted  for  a  moment  by  the  Russians,  who  then 
dominated  the  socialist  party  in  Chicago  and 
among  whom  a  crude  interpretation  of  the  class 
conflict  was  the  test  of  the  faith. 

During  those  first  years  on  Halsted  Street  noth- 
ing was  more  painfully  clear  than  the  fact  that 
pliable  human  nature  is  relentlessly  pressed  upon 
by  its  physical  environment.  I  saw  nowhere  a 
more  devoted  effort  to  understand  and  relieve  that 


ECONOMIC  DISCUSSION  187 

heavy  pressure  than  the  socialists  were  making, 
and  I  should  have  been  glad  to  have  had  the  com- 
radeship of  that  gallant  company  had  they  not 
firmly  Insisted  that  fellowship  depends  upon  Iden- 
tity of  creed.  They  repudiated  similarity  of  aim 
and  social  sympathy  as  tests  which  were  much  too 
loose  and  wavering  as  they  did  that  vague  social- 
ism which  for  thousands  has  come  to  be  a  philos- 
ophy or  rather  religion  embodying  the  hope  of  the 
world  and  the  protection  of  all  who  suifer. 

I  also  longed  for  the  comfort  of  a  definite  social 
creed,  which  should  afford  at  one  and  the  same 
time  an  explanation  of  the  social  chaos  and  the 
logical  steps  towards  its  better  ordering.  I  came 
to  have  an  exaggerated  sense  of  responsibility  for 
the  poverty  in  the  midst  of  which  I  was  living  and 
which  the  socialists  constantly  forced  me  to  defend. 
My  plight  was  not  unlike  that  which  might  have 
resulted  In.  my  old  days  of  skepticism  regarding 
foreordlnatlon,  had  I  then  been  compelled  to  de- 
fend the  confusion  arising  from  the  clashing  of  free 
wills  as  an  alternative  to  an  acceptance  of  the  doc- 
trine. Another  difficulty  in  the  way  of  accepting 
this  economic  determinism,  so  baldly  dependent 
upon  the  theory  of  class  consciousness,  constantly 
arose  when  I  lectured  in  country  towns  and  there 
had  opportunities  to  read  human  documents  of 
prosperous  people  as  well  as  those  of  my  neighbors 
who  were  crowded  into  the  city.  The  former  were 
stoutly  unconscious  of  any  classes  in  America,  and 


1 88    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

the  class  consciousness  of  the  immigrants  was  fast 
being  broken  into  by  the  necessity  for  making  new 
and  unprecedented  connections  in  the  industrial 
life  all  about  them. 

In  the  meantime,  although  many  men  of  many 
minds  met  constantly  at  our  conferences,  it  was 
amazing  to  find  the  incorrigible  good  nature  which 
prevailed.  Radicals  are  accustomed  to  hot  dis- 
cussion and  sharp  differences  of  opinion  and  take 
it  all  in  the  day's  work.  I  recall  that  the  secretary 
of  the  Hull-House  Social  Science  Club  at  the  an- 
niversary of  the  seventh  year  of  its  existence  read 
a  report  in  which  he  stated  that,  so  far  as  he  could 
remember,  but  twice  during  that  time  had  a  speaker 
lost  his  temper,  and  in  each  case  it  had  been  a  col- 
lege professor  who  "wasn't  accustomed  to  being 
talked  back  to." 

He  also  added  that  but  once  had  all  the  club 
members  united  in  applauding  the  same  speaker ; 
only  Samuel  Jones,  who  afterwards  became  "  the 
golden  rule  "  mayor  of  Toledo,  had  been  able  to 
overcome  all  their  dogmatic  differences,  when 
he  had  set  forth  a  plan  of  endowing  a  group  of 
workingmen  with  a  factory  plant  and  a  work- 
ing capital  for  experimentation  in  hours  and 
wages,  quite  as  groups  of  scholars  are  endowed 
^or  research. 

/  Chicago  continued  to  devote  much  time  to  eco- 
/  nomic  discussion  and  remained  in  a  state  of  youth- 
I       fuj   glamour   throughout   the  nineties.     I  recall  a 


ECONOMIC  DISCUSSION  189 

young  Methodist  minister  who,  in  order  to  free  his 
denomination  from  any  entanglement  in  his  dis- 
cussion of  the  economic  and  social  situation,  moved 
from  his  church  building  into  a  neighboring  hall. 
The  congregation  and  many  other  people  followed 
him  there,  and  he  later  took  to  the  street  corners 
because  he  found  that  the  shabbiest  men  liked  that 
the  best.  Professor  Herron  filled  to  overflowing  a 
downtown  hall  every  noon  with  a  series  of  talks  en- 
titled "  Between  Caesar  and  Jesus  "  —  an  attempt  to 
apply  the  teachings  of  the  Gospel  to  the  situations 
of  modern  commerce.  A  half  dozen  publications 
edited  with  some  ability  and  much  moral  enthu- 
siasm have  passed  away,  perhaps  because  they 
represented  pamphleteering  rather  than  journal- 
ism and  came  to  a  natural  end  when  the  situation 
changed.  Certainly  their  editors  suffered  criti- 
cism and  poverty  on  behalf  of  the  causes  which  they 
represented. 

Trade-unionists,  unless  they  were  also  socialists, 
were  not  prominent  In  those  economic  discussions, 
although  they  were  steadily  making  an  effort  to 
bring  order  into  the  unnecessary  industrial  confu- 
sion. They  belonged  to  the  second  of  the  two 
classes  Into  which  Mill  divides  all  those  who  are  dis- 
satisfied with  human  life  as  It  Is,  and  whose  feelings 
are  wholly  identified  with  Its  radical  amendment. 
He  states  that  the  thoughts  of  one  class  are  in  the 
region  of  ultimate  aims,  of  ''  the  highest  Ideals  of 
human  life,"  while  the  thoughts  of  the  other  are 


I90    TWENTY   YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

in  the  region  of  the  ''immediately  useful,  and 
practically  attainable." 

The  meetings  of  our  Social  Science  Club  were 
carried  on  by  men  of  the  former  class,  many  of 
them  with  a  strong  religious  bias  who  constantly 
challenged  the  Church  to  assuage  the  human  spirit 
thus  torn  and  bruised  "in  the  tumult  of  a  time  dis- 
consolate." These  men  were  so  serious  in  their 
demand  for  religious  fellowship,  and  several  young 
clergymen  were  so  ready  to  respond  to  the  appeal, 
that  various  meetings  were  arranged  at  Hull- 
House,  in  which  a  group  of  people  met  together  to 
consider  the  social  question,  not  in  a  spirit  of  dis- 
cussion, but  in  prayer  and  meditation.  These 
clergymen  were  making  heroic  efforts  to  induce 
their  churches  to  formally  consider  the  labor 
situation,  and  during  the  years  which  have  elapsed 
since  then,  many  denominations  of  the  Christian 
Church  have  organized  labor  committees  ;  but  at 
that  time  there  was  nothing  of  the  sort  beyond  the 
society  in  the  established  Church  of  England  ''  to 
consider  the  conditions  of  labor." 

During  that  decade  even  the  most  devoted  of  that 
pioneer  church  society  failed  to  formulate  the  fervid 
desire  for  juster  social  conditions  into  anything 
more  convincing  than  a  literary  statement,  and  the 
Christian  Socialists,  at  least  when  the  American 
branch  held  its  annual  meeting  at  Hull-House, 
afforded  but  a  striking  portrayal  of  that  ''between- 
age  mood"  in  which  so  many  of  our  religious  con- 


ECONOMIC  DISCUSSION  191 

temporaries  are  forced  to  live.  I  remember  that 
I  received  the  same  impression  when  I  attended  a 
meeting  called  by  the  canon  of  an  English  cathedral 
to  discuss  the  relation  of  the  Church  to  labor.  The 
men  quickly  indicted  the  cathedral  for  its  useless- 
ness,  and  the  canon  asked  them  what  in  their  minds 
should  be  its  future.  The  men  promptly  replied 
that  any  new  social  order  would  wish,  of  course, 
to  preserve  beautiful  historic  buildings,  that  al- 
though they  would  dismiss  the  bishop  and  all  the 
clergy,  they  would  want  to  retain  one  or  two  schol- 
ars as  custodians  and  interpreters.  "And  what 
next  ?"  the  imperturbable  ecclesiastic  asked.  "We 
would  democratize  it,"  replied  the  men.  But  when 
it  came  to  a  more  detailed  description  of  such  an 
undertaking,  the  discussion  broke  into  a  dozen  bits, 
although  illuminated  by  much  shrewd  wisdom 
and  affording  a  clew,  perhaps  as  to  the  destruction 
of  the  bishop's  palace  by  the  citizens  of  this  same 
town,  who  had  attacked  it  as  a  symbol  of  swollen 
prosperity  during  the  bread  riots  of  the  earlier  part 
of  the  century. 

On  the  other  hand  the  w^orkingmen  who  continue 
to  demand  help  from  the  Church  thereby  acknowl- 
edge their  kinship,  as  does  the  son  who  continues 
to  ask  bread  from  the  father  who  gives  him  a 
stone.  I  recall  an  incident  connected  with  a  pro- 
longed strike  in  Chicago  on  the  part  of  the  typo- 
graphical unions  for  an  eight-hour  day.  The 
strike  had  been  conducted  in  a  most  orderly  manner 


192    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

and  the  union  men,  convinced  of  the  justice  of 
their  cause,  had  felt  aggrieved  because  one  of  the 
religious  publishing  houses  in  Chicago  had  con- 
stantly opposed  them.  Some  of  the  younger 
clergymen  of  the  denominations  who  were  friendly 
to  the  strikers'  cause  came  to  a  luncheon  at  Hull- 
House,  where  the  situation  was  discussed  by  the 
representatives  of  all  sides.  The  clergymen,  becom- 
ing much  interested  in  the  idealism  with  which  an 
officer  of  the  State  Federation  of  Labor  presented 
the  cause,  drew  from  him  the  story  of  his  search 
for  fraternal  relation  :  he  said  that  at  fourteen  years 
of  age  he  had  joined  a  church,  hoping  to  find  it 
there ;  he  had  later  become  a  member  of  many 
fraternal  organizations  and  mutual  benefit  societies, 
and,  although  much  impressed  by  their  rituals,  he 
was  disappointed  in  the  actual  fraternity.  He  had 
finally  found,  so  it  seemed  to  him,  in  the  cause  of 
organized  labor,  what  these  other  organizations  had 
failed  to  give  him,  —  an  opportunity  for  sacrificial 
;ffort. 

Chicago  thus  took  a  decade  to  discuss  the  prob- 
lems inherent  in  the  present  industrial  organization 
and  to  consider  what  might  be  done,  not  so  much 
against  deliberate  aggression  as  against  brutal  con- 
fusion and  neglect ;  quite  as  the  youth  of  promise 
passes  through  a  mist  of  rose-colored  hope  before 
he  settles  in  the  land  of  achievement  where  he 
becomes  all  too  dull  and  literal  minded.  And 
yet   as   I   hastily   review   the    decade    in    Chicago 


ECONOMIC  DISCUSSION  193 

which  followed  this  one  given  over  to  discussion, 
the  actual  attainment  of  these  early  hopes,  so  far 
as  they  have  been  realized  at  all,  seem  to  have 
come  from  men  of  aifairs  rather  than  from  those 
given  to  speculation.  Was  the  whole  decade  of 
discussion  an  illustration  of  that  striking  fact 
which  has  been  likened  to  the  changing  of  swords 
in  Hamlet;  that  the  abstract  minds  at  length 
yield  to  the  Inevitable  or  at  least  grow  less  ardent 
in  their  propaganda,  while  the  concrete  minds,  deal- 
ing constantly  with  daily  aifairs,  in  the  end  demon- 
strate the  reality  of  abstract  notions  ?  — 
I  remember  when  Frederic  Harrison  visited 
Hull-House  that  I  was  much  disappointed  to  find 
that  the  Positivists  had  not  made  their  ardor  for 
humanity  a  more  potent  factor  in  the  English 
social  movement,  as  I  was  surprised  during  a  visit 
from  John  Morley  to  find  that  he,  representing 
perhaps  the  type  of  man  whom  political  life  seemed 
to  have  pulled  away  from  the  ideals  of  his  youth, 
had  yet  been  such  a  champion  of  democracy  in  the 
full  tide  of  reaction.  My  observations  were  much 
too  superficial  to  be  of  value  and  certainly  both  men 
were  well  grounded  in  philosophy  and  theory  of 
social  reform  and  had  long  before  carefully  formu- 
lated their  principles,  as  the  new  English  Labor 
Party,  which  is  destined  to  break  up  the  reaction- 
ary period,  is  now  being  created  by  another  set  of 
theorists.  There  were  certainly  moments  during 
the  heated  discussions  of  this  decade  when  nothing 


194    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

seemed  so  important  as  right  theory  :  this  was 
borne  in  upon  me  one  brilliant  evening  at  Hull- 
House  when  Benjamin  Kidd,  author  of  the  much 
read  ''Social  Evolution,"  was  pitted  against  Victor 
Berger  of  Milwaukee,  even  then  considered  a  ris- 
ing man  in  the  SocialisrParty. 

At  any  rate  the  residents  at  Hull-House  dis- 
covered that  while  their  first  impact  with  city 
poverty  allied  them  to  groups  given  over  to  dis- 
cussion of  social  theories,  their  sober  efforts  to  heal 
neighborhood  ills  allied  them  to  general  public 
movements  which  were  without  challenging  creeds. 
But  while  we  discovered  that  we  most  easily  secured 
the  smallest  of  much  needed  improvements  by  at- 
taching our  efforts  to  those  of  organized  bodies, 
nevertheless  these  very  organizations  would  have 
been  impossible,  had  not  the  public  conscience  been 
aroused  and  the  community  sensibility  quickened 
by  these  same  ardent  theorists. 

As  I  review  these  very  first  impressions  of  the 
workers  in  unskilled  industries,  living  in  a  depressed 
quarter  of  the  city,  I  realize  how  easy  It  was  for 
us  to  see  exceptional  cases  of  hardship  as  typical 
of  the  average  lot,  and  yet,  in  spite  of  alleviating 
philanthropy  and  labor  legislation,  the  indictment 
of  Tolstoy  applied  to  Moscow  thirty  years  ago  still 
fits  every  American  city  :  "Wherever  we  may  live, 
if  we  draw  a  circle  around  us  of  a  hundred  thousand, 
or  a  thousand,  or  even  of  ten  miles  circumference, 
and  look  at  the  lives  of  those  men  and  women  who 


ECONOMIC   DISCUSSION  195 

are  Inside  our  circle,  we  shall  find  half-starved 
children,  old  people,  pregnant  women,  sick  and 
weak  persons,  working  beyond  their  strength,  who 
have  neither  food  nor  rest  enough  to  support  them, 
and  who,  for  this  reason,  die  before  their  time  ;  we 
shall  see  others,  full-grown,  who  are  Injured  and 
needlessly  killed  by  dangerous  and  hurtful  tasks." 

As  the  American  city  is  awakening  to  self-con- 
sciousness, it  slowly  perceives  the  civic  significance 
of  these  Industrial  conditions,  and  perhaps  Chicago 
has  been  foremost  in  the  effort  to  connect  the  un- 
regulated overgrowth  of  the  huge  centers  of  popu- 
lation, with  the  astonishingly  rapid  development 
of  Industrial  enterprises ;  quite  as  Chicago  was 
foremost  to  carry  on  the  preliminary  discussion 
through  which  a  basis  was  laid  for  like-mindedness 
and  the  coordination  of  divers  wills.  I  remember 
an  astute  English  visitor,  who  had  been  a  guest  in  a 
score  of  American  cities,  observed  that  It  was  hard 
to  understand  the  local  pride  he  constantly  en- 
countered ;  for  In  spite  of  the  boasting  on  the  part 
of  leading  citizens  in  the  western,  eastern'  and 
southern  towns,  all  American  cities  seemed  to  him 
essentially  alike  and  all  equally  the  results  of  an 
Industry  totally  unregulated  by  well-considered 
legislation. 

I  am  inclined  to  think  that  perhaps  all  this- 
general  discussion  was  inevitable  In  connection 
with  the  early  Settlements,  as  they  in  turn  were  the 
inevitable  result  of  theories  of  social  reform,  which 


196    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

in  their  full  enthusiasm  reached  America  by  way 
of  England,  only  in  the  last  decade  of  the  century. 
There  must  have  been  tough  fiber  somewhere ;  for, 
although  the  residents  of  Hull-House  were  often 
baffled  by  the  radicalism  within  the  Social  Science 
Club  and  harassed  by  the  criticism  from  outside, 
we  still  continued  to  believe  that  such  discussion 
should  be  carried  on,  for  if  the  Settlement  seeks 
.  its  expression  through  social  activity,  it  must  learn 
\  the  difference  between  mere  social  unrest  and  spirit- 
ual impulse. 
/  The  group  of  Hull-House  residents,  which  by  the 
end  of  the  decade  comprised  twenty-five,  differed 
widely  in  social  beliefs,,  from  the  girl  direct  from 
the  country  who  looked  upon  all  social  unrest  as 
mere  anarchy,  to  the  resident,  who  had  become  a 
socialist  when  a  student  in  Zurich,  and  who  had 
long  before  translated  from  the  German  Engel's 
'^ Conditions  of  the  Working  Class  in  England," 
although  at  this  time  she  had  been  read  out  of  the 
Socialist  Part}^  because  the  Russian  and  German 
Impossibilists  suspected  her  fluent  English,  as  she 
always  lightly  explained.  Although  thus  diversified 
in  social  beliefs,  the  residents  became  solidly  united 
through  our  mutual  experience  in  an  industrial 
quarter,  and  we  became  not  only  convinced  of  the 
need  for  social  control  and  protective  legislation 
but  also  of  the  value  of  this  preliminary  argument. 
This  decade  of  discussion  between  1890  and  1900 
already  seems  remote  from  the  spirit  of  Chicago  of 


ECONOMIC  DISCUSSION 


197 


to-day.  So  far  as  I  have  been  able  to  reproduce 
this  earlier  period,  it  must  reflect  the  essential 
provisionality  of  everything;  "the  perpetual  mov- 
ing on  to  something  future  which  shall  supersede 


\ 


the  present,"  that  paramount  impression  of  life 
itself,  which  affords  us  at  one  and  the  same  time, 
ground  for  despair  and  for  endless  and  varied  an- 
ticipation. 


CHAPTER  X 
Pioneer  Labor  Legislation  in  Illinois 

Our  very  first  Christmas  at  Hull-House,  when  we 
as  yet  knew  nothing  of  child  labor,  a  number  of 
little  girls  refused  the  candy  which  was  offered 
them  as  part  of  the  Christmas  good  cheer,  saying 
simply  that  they  ''worked  in  a  candy  factory  and 
could  not  bear  the  sight  of  it."  We  discovered 
that  for  six  weeks  they  had  worked  from  seven  in 
the  morning  until  nine  at  night,  and  they  were 
exhausted  as  well  as  satiated.  The  sharp  con- 
sciousness of  stern  economic  conditions  was  thus 
thrust  upon  us  in  the  midst  of  the  season  of  good 
will. 

During  the  same  winter  three  boys  from  a  Hull- 
House  club  were  injured  at  one  machine  in  a 
neighboring  factory  for  lack  of  a  guard  which  would 
have  cost  but  a  few  dollars.  When  the  injury  of 
one  of  these  boys  resulted  in  his  death,  we  felt 
quite  sure  that  the  owners  of  the  factory  would 
share  our  horror  and  remorse,  and  that  they  would 
do  everything  possible  to  prevent  the  recurrence 
of  such  a  tragedy.  To  our  surprise  they  did  noth- 
ing whatever,  and  I  made  my  first  acquaintance 
then  with  those  pathetic  documents  signed  by  the 

198 


Sweatshop  Workers. 


LABOR  LEGISLATION   IN   ILLINOIS    199 

parents  of  working  children,  that  they  will  make  / 
no  claim  for  damages  resulting  from  ''carelessness.^!-^/ 

The  visits  we  made  in  the  neighborhood  con- 
stantly discovered  women  sewing  upon  sweatshop 
work,  and  often  they  were  assisted  by  incredibly 
small  children.  I  remem.ber  a  little  girl  of  four 
who  pulled  out  basting  threads  hour  after  hour, 
sitting  on  a  stool  at  the  feet  of  her  Bohemian 
mother,  a  little  bunch  of  human  misery.  But  even 
for  that  there  was  no  legal  redress,  for  the  only 
child  labor  law  in  Illinois,  with  any  provision  for 
enforcement,  had  been  secured  by  the  coal  miners'  ( 
unions,  and  w^as  confined  to  children  employed  in  | 
mines. 

We  learned  to  know  many  families  in  which  the 
working  children  contributed  to  the  support  of 
their  parents,  not  only  because  they  spoke  English 
better  than  the  older  immigrants  and  were  willing 
to  take  lower  wages,  but  because  their  parents 
gradually  found  it  easy  to  live  upon  their  earnings. 
A  South  Italian  peasant  who  has  picked  olives  and 
packed  oranges  from  his  toddling  babyhood,  cannot 
see  at  once  the  difference  between  the  outdoor 
healthy  work  which  he  has  performed  in  the  vary- 
ing seasons,  and  the  long  hours  of  monotonous 
factory  life  which  his  child  encounters  when  he 
goes  to  work  in  Chicago.  An  Italian  father  came 
to  us  in  great  grief  over  the  death  of  his  eldest  child, 
a  little  girl  of  twelve,  who  had  brought  the  largest 
wages  into  the  family  fund.     In  the  midst  of  his 


200    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

genuine  sorrow  he  said  :  "She  was  the  oldest  kid  I 
had.  Now  I  shall  have  to  go  back  to  work  again 
until  the  next  one  is  able  to  take  care  of  me." 
The  man  was  only  thirty-three  and  had  hoped  to 
retire  from  work  at  least  during  the  winters.  No 
foreman  cared  to  have  him  in  a  factory,  untrained 
and  unintelligent  as  he  was.  It  was  much  easier 
for  his  bright,  English-speaking  little  girl  to  get  a 
chance  to  paste  labels  on  a  box  than  for  him  to 
secure  an  opportunity  to  carry  pig  iron.  The  effect 
on  the  child  was  what  no  one  concerned  thought 
about,  in  the  abnormal  effort  she  made  thus  pre- 
maturely to  bear  the  weight  of  life.  Another  little 
girl  of  thirteen,  a  Russian-Jewish  child  employed 
in  a  laundry  at  a  heavy  task  beyond  her  strength, 
committed  suicide,  because  she  had  borrowed  three 
dollars  from  a  companion  which  she  could  not  re- 
pay unless  she  confided  the  story  to  her  parents 
and  gave  up  an  entire  week's  wages  —  but  what 
could  the  family  live  upon  that  week  in  case  she 
did  !  Her  child  mind,  of  course,  had  no  sense  of 
proportion,  and  carbolic  acid  appeared  inevitable. 
While  we  found  many  pathetic  cases  of  child  labor 
and  hard-driven  victims  of  the  sweating  system 
who  could  not  possibly  earn  enough  in  the  short 
busy  season  to  support  themselves  during  the  rest 
of  the  year,  it  became  evident  that  we  must  add 
carefully  collected  information  to  our  general  im- 
pression of  neighborhood  conditions  if  we  would 
make  it  of  any  genuine  value. 


LABOR  LEGISLATION   IN   ILLINOIS    201 

There  was  at  that  time  no  statistical  information 
on  Chicago  industrial  conditions,  and  Mrs.  Florence 
Kelley,  an  early  resident  of  Hull-House,  suggested 
to  the  Illinois  State  Bureau  of  Labor  that  they 
investigate  the  sweating  system  in  Chicago  with 
its  attendant  child  labor.  The  head  of  the  Bureau  , 
adopted  this  suggestion  and  engaged  Mrs.  Kelley  / 
to  make  the  investigation.  When  the  report  was 
presented  to  the  Illinois  Legislature,  a  special  com- 
mittee was  appointed  to  look  into  the  Chicago 
conditions.  I  well  recall  that  on  the  Sunday  the 
members  of  this  commission  came  to  dine  at  Hull- 
House,  our  hopes  ran  high,  and  we  believed  that 
at  last  some  of  the  worst  ills  under  which  our 
neighbors  were  suffering  would  be  brought  to  a"]^ 

end.  ^         \ 

As  a  result  of  its  investigations,  this  committee 
recommended  to  the  Legislature  the  provisions/ 
which  afterwards  became  those  of  the  first  factory/ 
law  of  Illinois,  regulating  the  sanitary  conditions 
of  the  sweatshop  and  fixing  fourteen  as  the  age  at 
which  a  child  might  be  employed.  Before  the 
passage  of  the  law  could  be  secured,  it  was  neces- 
sary to  appeal  to  all  elements  of  the  community, 
and  a  little  group  of  us  addressed  the  open  meetings 
of  trades-unions  and  of  benefit  societies,  church 
organizations,  and  social  clubs  literally  every  even- 
ing for  three  months.  Of  course  the  most  energetic 
help  as  well  as  intelligent  understanding  came  from 
the  trades-unions.     The  central  labor  body  of  Chi- 


202    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

cago,  then  called  the  Trades  and  Labor  Assembly^ 
had  previously  appointed  a  committee  of  investi- 
\  gation  to  inquire  into  the  sweating  system.  This 
committee  consisted  of  five  delegates  from  the 
unions  and  five  outside  their  membership.  Two 
of  the  latter  were  residents  of  Hull-House,  and 
continued  with  the  unions  in  their  well-conducted 
campaign  until  the  passage  of  Illinois's  first  Fac- 
tory Legislation  was  secured,  a  statute  which  has 
gradually  been  built  upon  by  many  public-spirited 
citizens  until  Illinois  stands  well  among  the  States, 
at  least  in  the  matter  of  protecting  her  children. 
The  Hull-House  residents  that  winter  had  their  first 
experience  in  lobbying.  I  remember  that  I  very 
much  disliked  the  word  and  still  more  the  prospect 
of  the  lobbying  itself,  and  we  insisted  that  well- 
known  Chicago  women  should  accompany  this  first 
little  group  of  Settlement  folk  who  with  trade- 
unionists  moved  upon  the  state  capitol  in  behalf 
of  factory  legislation.  The  national  or,  to  use  its 
formal  name.  The  General  Federation  of  Woman's 
Clubs  had  been  organized  in  Chicago  only  the 
year  before  this  legislation  was  secured.  The 
Federation  was  then  timid  in  regard  to  all  legisla- 
tion because  it  was  anxious  not  to  frighten  its 
new  membership,  although  Its  second  president, 
Mrs.  Henrotin,  was  most  untiring  In  her  efforts  to 
secure  this  law. 

It  was,  perhaps,  a  premature  effort,  though  cer- 
tainly founded  upon  a  genuine  need,  to  urge  that  a 


LABOR  LEGISLATION   IN   ILLINOIS    203 

clause  limiting  the  hours  of  all  women  working  in 
factories  or  workshops  to  eight  a  day,  or  forty-eight 
a  week,  should  be  inserted  in  the  first  factory  legis- 
lation of  the  State.  Although  we  had  lived  at 
Hull-House  but  three  years  when  we  urged  this 
legislation,  we  had  known  a  large  number  of  young 
girls  who  were  constantly  exhausted  by  night  work  ; 
for  whatever  may  be  said  in  defense  of  night  w^ork 
for  men,  few  women  are  able  to  endure  it.  A  man  ^ 
who  works  by  night  sleeps  regularly  by  day,  but  a 
woman  finds  It  impossible  to  put  aside  the  house- 
hold duties  which  crowd  upon  her,  and  a  conscien- 
tious girl  finds  it  hard  to  sleep  with  her  mother 
washing  and  scrubbing  within  a  few  feet  of  her  bed. 
One  of  the  most  painful  impressions  of  those  first 
years  is  that  of  pale,  listless  girls,  who  worked  regu- 
larly in  a  factory  of  the  vicinity  which  was  then 
running  full  night  time.  These  girls  also  encoun- 
tered a  special  danger  In  the  early  morning  hours  as 
they  returned  from  work,  debilitated  and  exhausted, 
and  only  too  easily  convinced  that  a  drink  and  a 
little  dancing  at  the  end  of  the  balls  In  the  saloon 
dance  halls,  was  what  they  needed  to  brace  them. 
One  of  the  girls  whom  we  then  knew,  whose  name, 
Chloe,  seemed  to  fit  her  delicate  charm,  craving  a 
drink  to  dispel  her  lassitude  before  her  tired  feet 
should  take  the  long  walk  home,  had  thus  been  de- 
coyed into  a  saloon,  where  the  soft  drink  was  fol- 
lowed by  an  alcoholic  one  containing  "knockout 
drops,"  and  she  awoke  in  a  disreputable  rooming 


204    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

house  —  too  frightened  and  disgraced  to  return  to 
her  mother. 

Thus  confronted  by  that  old  conundrum  of  the 
interdependence  of  matter  and  spirit,  the  conviction 
was  forced  upon  us  that  long  and  exhausting  hours 
of  work  are  almost  sure  to  be  followed  by  lurid 
and  exciting  pleasures  ;  that  the  power  to  overcome 
temptation  reaches  its  limit  almost  automatically 
with  that  of  physical  resistance.  The  eight-hour 
-  clause  in  this  first  factory  law  met  with  much  less 
.  opposition  in  the  Legislature  than  was  anticipated, 
'  and  was  enforced  for  a  year  before  it  was  pro- 
nounced unconstitutional  by  the  Supreme  Court  of 
Illinois.  During  the  halcyon  months  when  it  was 
a  law,  a  large  and  enthusiastic  Eight-Hour  Club 
of  working  women  met  at  Hull-House,  to  read  the 
literature  on  the  subject  and  in  every  way  to  pre- 
pare themselves  to  make  public  sentiment  in  favor 
of  the  measure  which  'meant  so  much  to  them. 
The  adverse  decision  in  the  test  case,  the  progress  of 
which  they  had  most  intelligently  followed,  was  a 
matter  of  great  disappointment.  The  entire  ex- 
perience left  on  my  mind  a  distrust  of  all  legislation 
which  was  not  preceded  by  full  discussion  and 
understanding.  A  premature  measure  may  be 
carried  through  a  legislature  by  perfectly  legiti- 
mate means  and  still  fail  to  possess  vitality  and  a 
sense  of  maturity.  On  the  other  hand,  the  adminis- 
tration of  an  advanced  law  acts  somewhat  as  a 
referendum.     The  people  have  an  opportunity  for 


LABOR   LEGISLATION   IN   ILLINOIS    205 

two  years  to  see  the  effects  of  its  operation.  If  they 
choose  to  reopen  the  matter  at  the  next  General 
Assembly,  it  can  be  discussed  with  experience  and 
conviction  ;  the  very  operation  of  the  law  has  per- 
formed the  function  of  the  ''referendum"  in  a 
limited  use  of  the  term. 

Founded  upon  some  such  compunction,  the  sense 
that  the  passage  of  the  child  labor  law  would  in  many 
cases  work  hardship,  was  never  absent  from  my  mind 
during  the  earliest  years  of  its  operation.  I  ad- 
dressed as  many  mothers'  meetings  and  clubs  among 
working  women  as  I  could,  in  order  to  make  clear 
the  object  of  the  law  and  the  ultimate  benefit  to 
themselves  as  well  as  to  their  children.  I  am  happy 
to  remember  that  I  never  met  with  lack  of  under- 
standing among  the  hard-working  widows,  in  whose 
behalf  many  prosperous  people  were  so  eloquent. 
These  widowed  mothers  would  say,  ''Why,  of 
course,  that  is  what  I  am  working  for,  —  to  give  the 
children  a  chance.  I  want  them  to  have  more 
education  than  I  had"  ;  or  another,  "That  is  why 
we  came  to  America,  and  I  don't  want  to  spoil  his 
start,  even  although  his  father  is  dead  "  ;  or,  "  It's 
different  in  America.  A  boy  gets  left  if  he  isn't 
educated."  There  was  always  a  willingness,  even 
among  the  poorest  women,  to  keep  on  with  the  hard 
night  scrubbing  or  the  long  days  of  washing  for  the 
children's  sake. 

The  bitterest  opposition  to  the  law  came  from 
the  large  glass  companies  who  were  so  accustomed 


2o6    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

to  use  the  labor  of  children,  that  they  were  con- 
vinced the  manufacturing  of  glass  could  not  be 
carried  on  without  it. 

Fifteen  years  ago  the  State  of  Illinois,  as  well  as 
Chicago,  exhibited  many  characteristics  of  the 
pioneer  country  in  which  untrammeled  energy 
and  an  "early  start"  were  still  the  most  highly 
prized  generators  of  success.  Although  this  first 
labor  legislation  was  but  bringing  Illinois  into  line 
with  the  nations  in  the  modern  industrial  world, 
which  ''have  long  been  obliged  for  their  own  sakes 
to  come  to  the  aid  of  the  workers  by  which  they 
live,  —  that  the  child,  the  young  person  and  the 
woman  may  be  protected  from  their  own  weakness 
and  necessity,  —  "  nevertheless  from  the  first  it  ran 
counter  to  the  instinct  and  tradition,  almost  to  the 
very  religion  of  the  manufacturers  of  the  state,  who 
were  for  the  most  part  self-made  men. 

This  first  attempt  in  Illinois  for  adequate  factory 
legislation  also  was  associated  in  the  minds  of 
business  men  with  radicalism,  because  the  law  was 
secured  during  the  term  of  Governor  Altgelt  and 
was  first  enforced  during  his  administration.  While 
nothing  in  its  genesis  or  spirit  could  be  further  from 
''anarchy"  than  factory  legislation,  and  while  the 
first  law  in  Illinois  was  still  far  behind  Massachu- 
setts and  New  York,  the  fact  that  Governor  Altgelt 
pardoned  from  the  state's  prison  the  anarchists 
who  had  been  sentenced  there  after  the  Haymarket 
riot,  gave  the  opponents  of  this  most  reasonable 


LABOR   LEGISLATION   IN   ILLINOIS    207 

legislation  a  quickly  utilized  opportunity  to  couple 
it  with  that  detested  word ;  the  State  document 
which  accompanied  Governor  Altgelt's  pardon 
gave  these  ungenerous  critics  a  further  opportu- 
nity, because  a  magnanimous  action  was  marred  by 
personal  rancor,  betraying  for  the  moment  the  in- 
firmity of  a  noble  mind.  For  all  of  these  reasons 
this  first  modification  of  the  undisturbed  control  of 
the  aggressive  captains  of  industry,  could  not  be- 
enforced  without  resistance  marked  by  dramatic 
episodes  and  revolts.  The  inception  of  the  law 
had  already  become  associated  with  Hull-House, 
and  when  its  ministration  was  also  centered  there, 
we  inevitably  received  all  the  odium  which  these 
first  efforts  entailed.  Mrs.  Kelley  was  appointed 
the  first  factory  inspector  with  a  deputy  and  a  force 
of  twelve  inspectors  to  enforce  the  law.  Both  Mrs. 
Kelley  and  her  assistant,  Mrs.  Stevens,  lived  at 
Hull-House ;  the  office  was  on  Polk  Street  directly 
opposite,  and  one  of  the  most  vigorous  deputies  was 
the  president  of  the  Jane  Club.  In  addition,  one 
of  the  early  men  residents,  since  dean  of  a  state 
law  school,  acted  as  prosecutor  in  the  cases  brought 
against  the  violators  of  the  law. 

Chicago  had  for  years  been  notoriously  lax  in  the 
administration  of  law,  and  the  enforcement  of  an 
unpopular  measure  was  resented  equally  by  the 
president  of  a  large  manufacturing  concern  and  by 
the  former  victim  of  a  sweatshop  who  had  started 
a   place   of   his    own.     Whatever   the    sentiments 


2o8    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 


towards  the  new  law  on  the  part  of  the  employers, 
there  was  no  doubt  of  its  enthusiastic  reception  by 
the  trades-unions,  as  the  securing  of  the  law  had 

already  come  from 
them,  and  through 
the  years  which  have 
elapsed  since,  the 
experience  of  the 
Hull-House  residents 
would  coincide  with 
that  of  an  English 
statesman  who  said 
that  "a  common  rule 
for  the  standard  of 
life  and  the  condi- 
tion of  labor  may  be 
secured  by  legisla- 
tion, but  it  must  be 
maintained  by  trades 
unionism." 

This  special  value 
of  the  trades-unions 
first  became  clear  to 
the  residents  of  Hull- 
House  in  connection 
with    the  sweating 
system.      We    early 
found  that  the  women  In  the  sewing  trades  were 
sorely  in  need  of  help.     The  trade  was  thoroughly 
disorganized,  Russian  and  Polish  tailors  competing 


LABOR   LEGISLATION   IN   ILLINOIS    209 

against  English-speaking  tailors,  unskilled  Bo- 
hemian and  Italian  women  competing  against  both. 
These  women  seem  to  have  been  best  helped 
through  the  use  of  the  label  when  unions  of  special- 
ized workers  in  the  trade  are  strong  enough  to 
insist  that  the  manufacturers  shall  ^'give  out  work" 
only  to  those  holding  union  cards.  It  was  cer- 
tainly impressive  when  the  garment  makers  them- 
selves in  this  way  finally  succeeded  in  organizing 
six  hundred  of  the  Italian  women  in  our  immediate 
vicinity,  who  had  finished  garments  at  home  for 
the  most  wretched  and  precarious  wages.  To  be 
sure,  the  most  ignorant  women  only  knew  that 
"you  couldn't  get  clothes  to  sew"  from  the  places 
where  they  paid  the  best,  unless  '^you  had  a  card," 
but  through  the  veins  of  most  of  them  there  pulsed 
the  quickened  blood  of  a  new  fellowship,  a  sense  of 
comfort  and  aid  w^hich  had  been  held  out  to  them 
by  their  fellow-workers. 

During  the  fourth  year  of  our  residence  at  Hull- 
House  we  found  ourselves  in  a  large  mass  meeting 
ardently  advocating  the  passage  of  a  Federal  meas- 
ure called  the  Sulzer  Bill.  Even  in  our  short 
struggle  with  the  evils  of  the  sweating  system  it 
did  not  seem  strange  that  the  center  of  the  eifort 
had  shifted  to  Washington,  for  by  that  time  we  had 
realized  that  the  sanitary  regulation  of  sweat- 
shops by  city  officials,  and  a  careful  enforcement  of 
factory  legislation  by  state  factory  inspectors  will 
not  avail,  unless  each  city  and  State  shall  be  able 


2IO    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

to  pass  and  enforce  a  code  of  comparatively  uni- 
form legislation.  Although  the  Sulzer  Act  failed 
to  utilize  the  Interstate  Commerce  legislation  for 
its  purpose,  many  of  the  national  representatives 
realized  for  the  first  time  that  only  by  federal  legis- 
lation could  their  constituents  in  remote  country 
places  be  protected  from  contagious  diseases  raging 
in  New  York  or  Chicago,  for  many  country  doctors 
testify  as  to  the  outbreak  of  scarlet  fever  in  rural 
neighborhoods  after  the  children  have  begun  to 
wear  the  winter  overcoats  and  cloaks  which  have 
-  been  sent  from  infected  city  sweatshops. 

Through  our  efforts  to  modify  the  sweating 
system,  the  Hull-House  residents  gradually  became 
committed  to  the  fortunes  of  the  Consjiinefs-'- 
League,  an  organization  which  for  years  has  been 
"^ppiuat^hing  the  question  of  the  underpaid  sewing 
woman  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  ultimate  re- 
sponsibility lodged  in  the  consumer.  It  becomes 
more  reasonable  to  make  the  presentation  of  the 
sweatshop  situation  through  this  League,  as  it  is 
more  effectual  to  work  with  them  for  the  extension 
of  legal  provisions  in  the  slow  upbuilding  of  that 
code  of  legislation  which  is  alone  sufficient  to  pro- 
tect the  home  from  the  dangers  incident  to  the 
sweating  system. 

The  Consumers'  League  seems  to  afford  the  best 
method  of  approach  for  the  protection  of  girls  in 
department  stores ;  I  recall  a  group  of  girls  from  a 
neighboring    "emporium"    who    applied   to   Hull- 


LABOR   LEGISLATION   IN   ILLINOIS    211 

House  for  dancing  parties  on  alternate  Sunday 
afternoons.  In  reply  to  our  protest  they  told  us 
they  not  only  worked  late  every  evening,  in  spite 
of  the  fact  that  each  was  supposed  to  have  "two 
nights  a  week  off,"  and  every  Sunday  morning,  but 
that  on  alternate  Sunday  afternoons  they  were 
required  ''to  sort  the  stock."  Over  and  over  again, 
meetings  called  by  the  Clerks  Union  and  others, 
have  been  held  at  Hull-House  protesting  against 
these  incredibly  long  hours.  Little  modification 
has  come  about,  however,  during  our  twenty  years 
of  residence,  although  one  large  store  in  the  Bo- 
hemian quarter  closes  all  day  on  Sunday  and  many 
of  the  others  for  three  nights  a  week.  In  spite  of 
the  Sunday  w^ork,  these  girls  prefer  the  outlying 
department  stores  to  those  downtown ;  there  is 
more  social  intercourse  with  the  customers,  more 
kindliness  and  social  equality  between  the  sales- 
w^omen  and  the  managers,  and  above  all  the  girls 
have  the  protection  naturally  afforded  by  friends 
and  neighbors  and  they  are  free  from  that  suspi- 
cion which  so  often  haunts  the  girls  downtown, 
that  their  fellow-workers  may  not  be  ''nice  girls." 
In  the  first  years  of  Hull-House  we  came  across 
no  trades-unions  among  the  women  workers,  and  I 
think,  perhaps,  that  only  one  union,  composed  solely 
of  women,  was  to  be  found  in  Chicago  then,  — 
that  of  the  bookbinders.  I  easily  recall  the  even- 
ing when  the  president  of  this  pioneer  organization 
accepted  an  invitation  to  take  dinner  at  Hull-House. 


212    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

She  came  In  rather  a  recalcitrant  mood,  expecting 
to  be  patronized  and  so  suspicious  of  our  motives, 
that  it  was  only  after  she  had  been  persuaded  to 
become  a  guest  of  the  house  for  several  weeks  in 
order  to  find  out  about  us  for  herself,  that  she  was 
convinced  of  our  sincerity  and  of  the  ability  of 
'^ outsiders"  to  be  of  any  service  to  working  women. 
She  afterward  became  closely  identified  with  Hull- 
House,  and  her  hearty  cooperation  was  assured 
until  she  moved  to  Boston  and  became  a  general 
organizer  for  the  American  Federation  of  Labor. 

The  women  shirt  makers  and  the  women  cloak 
makers  were  both  organized  at  Hull-House  as  was 
also  the  Dorcas  Federal  Labor  Union,  which  had 
been  founded  through  the  efforts  of  a  working 
woman,  then  one  of  the  residents.  The  latter 
union  met  once  a  month  in  our  drawing-room.  It 
was  composed  of  representatives  from  all  the  unions 
in  the  city  which  included  women  in  their  member- 
ship and  also  received  other  women  in  sympathy 
with  unionism.  It  was  accorded  representation 
in  the  central  labor  body  of  the  city,  and  later  it 
joined  Its  efforts  with  those  of  others  to  found 
the  Woman's  Union  Label  League.  In  what  we 
considered  a  praiseworthy  effort  to  unite  it  with 
other  organizations,  the  president  of  a  leading 
Woman's  Club  applied  for  membership.  We  were 
so  sure  of  her  election  that  she  stood  just  out- 
side of  the  drawing-room  door,  or,  in  trade-union 
language,  ''the  wicket  gate,"  while  her  name  was 


LABOR   LEGISLATION   IN   ILLINOIS    213 

voted  upon.  To  our  chagrin  she  did  not  receive 
enough  votes  to  secure  her  admission,  not  because 
the  working  girls,  as  they  were  careful  to  state,  did 
not  admire  her,  but  because  she  ''seemed  to  belong 
to  the  other  side."  Fortunately,  the  big-minded 
woman  so  thoroughly  understood  the  vote  and  her 
interest  in  working  women  w^as  so  genuine,  that  it 
was  less  than  a  decade  afterward  when  she  was 
elected  to  the  presidency  of  the  National  Woman's 
Trades  Union  League.  The  incident  and  the  sequel 
registers,  perhaps,  the  change  in  Chicago  towards^ 
the  labor  movement,  the  recognition  of  the  fact 
that  it  is  a  general  social  movement  concerning 
all  members  of  society  and  not  merely  a  class 
struggle. 

Some  such  public  estimate  of  the  labor  move- 
ment was  brought  home  to  Chicago  during  several 
conspicuous  strikes  ;  at  least  labor  legislation  has 
twice  been  Inaugurated  because  its  need  was  thus 
made  clear.  After  the  Pullman  strike  various  ele- 
ments in  the  community  were  unexpectedly  brought 
together  that  they  might  soberly  consider  and 
rectify  the  weaknesses  in  the  legal  structure  w^hich 
the  strike  had  revealed.  These  citizens  arranged 
for  a  large  and  representative  convention  to  be 
held  in  Chicago  on  Industrial  Conciliation  and 
Arbitration.  I  served  as  secretary  of  the  com- 
mittee from  the  new  Civic  Federation  having  the 
matter  in  charge,  and  our  hopes  ran  high  w^hen,  as 
a  result  of  the   agitation,  the   Illinois   legislature 


214    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

passed  a  law  creating  a  State  Board  of  Conciliation 
and  Arbitration.  But  even  a  state  board  cannot 
accomplish  more  than  public  sentiment  authorizes 
and  sustains,  and  we  might  easily  have  been  dis- 
couraged in  those  early  days  could  we  have  fore- 
seen some  of  the  industrial  disturbances  which 
have  since  disgraced  Chicago.  This  law  embodied 
the  best  provisions  of  the  then  existing  laws  for 
the  arbitration  of  industrial  disputes.  At  the  time 
the  word  arbitration  was  still  a  word  to  conjure 
with,  and  many  Chicago  citizens  were  convinced, 
not  only  of  the  danger  and  futility  involved  in  the 
open  warfare  of  opposing  social  forces,  but  further 
believed  that  the  search  for  justice  and  righteous- 
ness in  industrial  relations  was  made  infinitely 
more  difficult  thereby. 

The  Pullman  strike  afforded  much  illumination 
.to  many  Chicago  people.  Before  it.  there  hjj 
been  nothing  in  my  experience  to  revealjhat_dis- 
tinct  "Heavarg^~uf~society,  which  a  general  strike  at 
least  mmiientarily^ffords.  Certainly,  during  all 
those  dark  days  of  the  Pullman  strike,  the  growth 
of  class  bitterness  was  most  obvious.  The  fact  that 
the  Settlement  maintained  avenues  of  Intercourse 
with  both  ^T3^es~seeTired~T£gIve  It  opportunity_ior 
nQlhinKT)iit  a  r£aIization  of  _the-b4tterness_.and_d.Ivj- 
slon  along  classjvnes.  I  had  known  Mr.  Pullman 
and  had  seen  his  genuine  pride  and  pleasure  in  the 
model  town  he  had  built  with  so  much  care ;  and  I 
had  an  opportunity  to  talk  to  many  of  the  Pull- 


LABOR  LEGISLATION   IN   ILLINOIS    215 

man  employees  during  the  strike  when  I  was  sent 
from  a  so-called  "Citizens' Arbitration  Committee" 
to  their  first  meetings  held  in  a  hall  in  the  neighbor- 
ing village  of  Kensington,  and  when  I  was  invited 
to  the  modest  supper  tables  laid  in  the  model 
houses.  The  employees  then  expected  a  speedy 
settlement  and  no  one  doubted  but  that  all  the 
grievances  connected  with  the  "straw  bosses" 
would  be  quickly  remedied  and  that  the  benevo- 
lence which  had  built  the  model  town  would  not 
fail  them.  They  were  sure  that  the  "  straw  bosses  " 
had  misrepresented  the  state  of  affairs,  for  this 
very  first  awakening  to  class  consciousness  bore 
many  traces  of  the  servility  on  one  side  and  the 
arrogance  on  the  other  which  had  so  long  prevailed 
in  the  model  town.  The  entire  strike  demonstrated 
how  often  the  outcome  of  far-reaching  industrial 
disturbances  is  dependent  upon  the  personal  will  of 
the  employer  or  the  temperament.of  a  strike  leader. 
Those  familiar  with  strikes  know  only  too  well  how 
much  they  are  influenced  by  poignant  domestic 
situations,  by  the  troubled  consciences  of  the  minor- 
ity directors,  by  the  suffering  women  and  children, 
by  the  keen  excitement  of  the  struggle,  by  the  reli- 
gious scruples  sternly  suppressed  but  occasionally 
asserting  themselves,  now  on  one  side  and  now  on 
the  other,  and  by  that  undefined  psychology  of  the 
crowd  which  we  understand  so  little.  All  of  these 
factors  also  influence  the  public  and  do  much  to 
determine  popular  sympathy  and  judgment.     In 


2i6    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

the  early  days  of  the  Pullman  strike,  as  I  was 
coming  down  in  the  elevator  of  the  Auditorium 
hotel  from  one  of  the  futile  meetings  of  the  Arbi- 
tration Committee,  I  met  an  acquaintance,  who 
angrily  said  '^that  the  strikers  ought  all  to  be 
shot."  As  I  had  heard  nothing  so  bloodthirsty 
as  this  either  from  the  most  enraged  capitalist  or 
from  the  most  desperate  of  the  men,  and  was  inter- 
ested to  find  the  cause  of  such  a  senseless  outbreak, 
I  finally  discovered  that  the  first  ten  thousand  dol- 
lars which  my  acquaintance  had  ever  saved,  requir- 
ing, he  said,  years  of  effort  from  the  time  he  was 
twelve  years  old  until  he  was  thirty,  had  been  lost 
as  the  result  of  a  strike ;  he  clinched  his  argument 
that  he  knew  what  he  was  talking  about,  with  the 
statement  that  "no  one  need  expect  him  to  have 
any  sympathy  with  strikers  or  with  their  affairs." 
A  very  intimate  and  personal  experience  revealed, 
at  least  to  myself,  my  constant  dread  of  the  spread- 
ing ill  will.  At  the  height  of  the  sympathetic 
strike  my  oldest  sister  who  was  convalescing  from  a 
long  illness  in  a  hospital  near  Chicago,  became 
suddenly  very  much  worse.  While  I  was  able  to 
reach  her  at  once,  every  possible  obstacle  of  a 
delayed  and  blocked  transportation  system  in- 
terrupted the  journey  of  her  husband  and  children 
who  were  hurrying  to  her  bedside  from  a  distant 
state.  As  the  end  drew  nearer  and  I  was  obliged 
to  reply  to  my  sister's  constant  inquiries  that  her 
family  had  not  yet  come,  I  was  filled  with  a  pro- 


LABOR  LEGISLATION   IN   ILLINOIS    217 

found  apprehension  lest  her  last  hours  should  be 
touched  with  resentment  towards  those  responsible 
for  the  delay ;  lest  her  unutterable  longing  should 
at  the  very  end  be  tinged  with  bitterness.  She 
must  have  divined  what  was  In  my  n.md,  for  at 
last  she  said  each  time  after  the-rrcpetltlon  of  my 
sad  news  ;  ''I  don't  blame  any  one,  I  am  not  judg- 
ing them."  My  iie^aic  was  comforted  and  heavy 
at  the  same  time ;  but  how  many  more  such  mo- 
ments of  sorrow  and  death  were  being  made  dlfh- 
cult  and  lonely  throughout  the  land,  and  how  much 
would  these  experiences  add  to  the  lasting  bitter- 
ness, that  touch  of  self-righteousness  which  makes 
the  spirit  of  forgiveness  well-nigh  Impossible. 

When  I  returned  to  Chicago  from  the  quiet 
country  I  saw  the  Federal  troops  encamped  about 
the  post-office  ;  almost  every  one  on  Halsted  Street 
wearing  a  white  ribbon,  the  emblem  of  the  strikers' 
side  ;  the  residents  at  Hull-House  divided  In  opinion 
as  to  the  righteousness  of  this  or  that  measure  ;  and 
no  one  able  to  secure  any  real  information  as  to 
which  side  was  burning  the  cars.  After  the  Pull- 
man strike  I  made  an  attempt  to  analyze  In  a  paper 
which  I  called  The  Modern  King  Lear,  the  Inevitable 
revolt  of  human  nature  against  the  plans  Mr.  Pull- 
man had  made  for  his  employees,  the  miscarriage  of 
which  appeared  to  him  such  black  ingratitude.  It 
seemed  to  me  unendurable  not  to  make  some  effort 
to  gather  together  the  social  Implications  of  the  fail- 
ure of  this  benevolent  employer  and  its  relation  to 


2i8    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

the  demand  for  a  more  democratic  administration 
of  industry.  Doubtless  the  paper  represented  a 
certain  '* excess  of  participation,"  to  use  a  gentle 
phrasL  of  Charles  Lamb's  in  preference  to  a  more 
emphatic  one  used  by  Mr.  Pullman  himself.  The 
last  picture  ot  t^e  Pullman  strike  which  I  distinctly 
recall  was  three  year'^:  later  when  one  of  the  strike 
leaders  came  to  see  me.  Although  out  of  work  for 
most  of  the  time  since  the  strike,  he  had  been  undis- 
turbed for  six  months  in  the  repair  shops  of  a  street 
car  company,  under  an  assumed  name,  but  he  had 
at  that  moment  been  discovered  and  dismissed. 
He  was  a  superior  type  of  English  workingman,  but 
as  he  stood  there,  broken  and  discouraged,  believing 
himself  so  black-listed  that  his  skill  could  never  be 
used  again,  filled  with  sorrow  over  the  loss  of  his 
wife  who  had  recently  died  after  an  illness  with 
distressing  mental  symptoms,  realizing  keenly  the 
lack  of  the  respectable  way  of  living  he  had  always 
until  now  been  able  to  maintain,  he  seemed  to  me 
an  epitome  of  the  wretched  human  waste  such  a 
strike  implies.  I  fervently  hoped  that  the  new 
arbitration  law  would  prohibit  in  Chicago  forever 
more  such  brutal  and  ineffective  methods  of  settling 
industrial  disputes.  And  yet  even  as  early  as  1896, 
we  found  the  greatest  difficulty  in  applying  the 
arbitration  law  to  the  garment  workers'  strike, 
although  it  was  finally  accomplished  after  various 
mass  meetings  had  urged  it.  The  cruelty  and 
waste  of  the  strike  as  an  implement  for  securing 


LABOR   LEGISLATION   IN   ILLINOIS    219 

the  most  reasonable  demands,  came  to  me  at  an- 
other time,  during  the  long  strike  of  the  clothing 
cutters.  They  had  protested,  not  only  against 
various  wrongs  of  their  own,  but  against  the  fact 
that  the  tailors  employed  by  the  custom  merchants 
were  obliged  to  furnish  their  own  workshops  and 
thus  bore  a  burden  of  rent  which  belonged  to  the 
employer.  One  of  the  leaders  in  this  strike,  whom 
I  had  known  for  several  years  as  a  sober,  indus- 
trious and  unusually  intelligent  man,  I  saw  grad- 
ually break  down  during  the  many  trying  weeks 
and  at  last  suffer  a  complete  moral  collapse. 

He  was  a  man  of  sensitive  organization  under 
the  necessity,  as  is  every  leader  during  a  strike,  to 
address  the  same  body  of  men  day  after  day  with 
an  appeal  sufficiently  emotional  to  respond  to  their 
sense  of  injury ;  to  receive  callers  at  any  hour  of 
the  day  or  night ;  to  sympathize  with  all  the  dis- 
tress of  the  strikers  who  see  their  families  daily 
suffering ;  he  must  do  it  all  with  the  sickening 
sense  of  the  increasing  privation  in  his  own  home, 
and  In  this  case  w^ith  the  consciousness  that  failure 
was  approaching  nearer  each  day.  This  man,  accus- 
tomed to  the  monotony  of  his  workbench  and  sud- 
denly thrown  into  a  new  situation,  showed  every 
sign  of  nervous  fatigue  before  the  final  collapse 
came.  He  disappeared  after  the  strike  and  I  did 
not  see  him  for  ten  years,  but  when  he  returned  he 
Immediately  began  talking  about  the  old  grievances 
which  he  had  repeated  so  often  that  he  could  talk 


220    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 


of  nothing  else.  It  was  easy  to  recognize  the  same 
nervous  symptoms  which  the  broken-down  lecturer 
exhibits  who  has  depended  upon  the  exploitation 
of  his  own  experiences  to  keep  himself  going. 
One  of  his  stories  was  Indeed  pathetic.  His  em- 
ployer, during  the 
busy  season,  had  met 
him  one  Sunday 
afternoon  In  Lincoln 
Park  whither  he  had 
taken  his  three 
youngest  children, 
one  of  whom  had 
-  been  111.  The  em- 
ployer scolded  him 
_  for  thus  wasting  his 
E^£lr-^^  time  and  roughly 
asked  why  he  had 
not  taken  home 
enough  work  to  keep 
himself  busy  through 
the  day.  The  story 
was  quite  credible 
the  residents  at  Hull-House  have  had 
many  opportunities  to  see  the  worker  driven  ruth- 
lessly during  the  season  and  left  In  Idleness  for  long 
weeks  afterward.  We  have  slowly  come  to  realize 
that  periodical  Idleness  as  well  as  the  payment  of 
wages  Insufficient  for  maintenance  of  the  manual 
worker  In  full  industrial  and  domestic  efficiency, 


l^^uc^X'^^^'^^'iWUr 


lecause 


LABOR  LEGISLATION   IN  ILLINOIS    221 

stand  economically  on  the  same  footing  with  the 
"sweated"  industries,  the  overwork  of  women,  and 
employment  of  children. 

But  of  all  the  aspects  of  social  misery  nothing  is 
so  heart-breaking  as  unemployment,  and  it  was 
inevitable  that  we  should  see  much  of  it  in  a  neigh- 
borhood where  low  rents  attracted  the  poorly  paid 
worker  and  many  newly  arrived  immigrants  who 
were  first  employed  in  gangs  upon  railroad  exten- 
sions and  similar  undertakings.  The  sturdy  peas- 
ants eager  for  work  were  either  the  victims  of  the 
padrone  who  fleeced  them  unmercifully,  both  in 
securing  a  place  to  work  and  then  in  supplying  them 
with  food,  or  they  became  the  mere  sport  of  unscru- 
pulous employment  agencies.  Hull-House  made 
an  investigation  both  of  the  padrone  and  of  the 
agencies  in  our  immediate  vicinity,  and  the  out- 
come confirming  what  we  already  suspected,  we 
eagerly  threw  ourselves  Into  a  movement  to  pro- 
cure free  employment  bureaus  under  State  control 
until  a  law  authorizing  such  bureaus  and  giving 
the  officials  intrusted  with  their  management 
power  to  regulate  private  employment  agencies, 
passed  the  Illinois  Legislature  In  1899.  The 
history  of  these  bureaus  demonstrates  the  tend- 
ency we  all  have,  to  consider  a  legal  enactment 
in  itself  an  achievement  and  to  grow  careless  in 
regard  to  its  administration  and  actual  results ; 
for  an  investigation  into  the  situation  ten  years 
later  discovered  that  immigrants  were  still  shame- 


222    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

fully  Imposed  upon.  A  group  of  Bulgarians  were 
found  who  had  been  sent  to  work  in  Arkansas  where 
their  services  were  not  needed  ;  they  walked  back 
to  Chicago  only  to  secure  their  next  job  in  Okla- 
homa and  to  pay  another  railroad  fare  as  well  as 
another  commission  to  the  agency.  Not  only  was 
there  no  method  by  which  the  men  not  needed  in 
Arkansas  could  know  that  there  was  work  in 
Oklahoma  unless  they  came  back  to  Chicago  to 
find  it  out,  but  there  was  no  certainty  that  they 
might  not  be  obliged  to  walk  back  from  Oklahoma 
because  the  Chicago  agency  had  already  sent  out 
too  many  men. 

This  investigation  of  the  employment  bureau 
resources  of  Chicago  was  undertaken  by  the  League 
for  the  Protection  of  Immigrants,  with  whom  it  is 
possible  for  Hull-House  to  cooperate  whenever  an 
investigation  of  the  immigrant  colonies  in  our 
immediate  neighborhood  seems  necessary,  as  was 
recently  done  in  regard  to  the  Greek  colonies  of 
Chicago.  The  superintendent  of  this  League,  Miss 
Grace  Abbott,  is  a  resident  of  Hull-House  and  all 
of  our  later  attempts  to  secure  justice  and  oppor- 
tunity for  immigrants  are  much  more  effective 
through  the  League,  and  when  we  speak  before  a 
congressional  committee  in  Washington  concerning 
the  needs  of  Chicago  immigrants,  we  represent  the 
League  as  well  as  our  own  neighbors. 

It  is  in  connection  with  the  first  factory  employ- 
ment of  newly  arrived  immigrants  and  the  innum- 


LABOR   LEGISLATION   IN   ILLINOIS    223 

erable  difficulties  attached  to  their  first  adjust- 
ment, that  some  of  the  most  profound  industrial 
disturbances  in  Chicago  have  come  about.  Under 
any  attempt  at  classification  these  strikes  belong 
more  to  the  general  social  movement  than  to  the 
industrial  conflict,  for  the  strike  is  an  implement 
used  most  rashly  by  unorganized  labor  who,  after 
they  are  in  difficulties,  call  upon  the  trades-unions 
for  organization  and  direction.  They  are  similar 
to  those  strikes  which  are  inaugurated  by  the  unions 
on  behalf  of  unskilled  labor.  In  neither  case  do 
the  hastily  organized  unions  usually  hold  after 
the  excitement  of  the  moment  has  subsided,  and 
the  most  valuable  result  of  such  strikes  is  the  ex- 
panding consciousness  of  the  solidarity  of  the 
workers.  This  was  certainly  the  result  of  the 
Chicago  stockyard  strike  in  1905,  inaugurated  on 
behalf  of  the  immigrant  laborers  and  so  conspicu- 
ously carried  on  without  violence  that,  although 
twenty-two  thousand  workers  were  idle  during 
the  entire  summer,  there  were  fewer  arrests  in 
the  stockyards  district  than  the  average  summer 
months  afford.  However,  the  story  of  this  strike 
should  not  be  told  from  Hull-House,  but  from  the 
University  of  Chicago  Settlement,  where  Miss 
Mary  McDowell  performed  such  signal  public 
service  during  that  trying  summer.  It  would  be 
interesting  to  trace  how  much  of  the  subsequent 
exposure  of  conditions  and  attempts  at  govern- 
mental  control   of   this   huge    industry  had  their 


224    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

genesis  in  this  first  attempt  of  the  unskilled 
workers  to  s^ecure  a  higher  standard  of  living. 
Certainly  the  industrial  conflict  when  epitomized 
in  a  strike,  centers  public  attention  on  conditions 
as  nothing  else  can  do.  A  strike  is  one  of  the  most 
exciting  episodes  in  modern  life  and  as  it  assumes 
the  characteristics  of  a  game,  the  entire  population 
of  a -city  becomes  divided  into  two  cheering  sides. 
In  such  moments  the  fair-minded  public,  who  ought 
to  be  depended  upon  as  a  referee,  practically  dis- 
appears. Any  one  who  tries  to  keep  the  attitude 
of  nonpartisanship,  which  is  perhaps  an  impossible 
one,  is  quickly  under  suspicion  by  both  sides.  At 
least  that  was  the  fate  of  a  group  of  citizens  ap- 
pointed by  the  mayor  of  Chicago  to  arbitrate  dur- 
ing the  stormy  teamsters'  strike  which  occurred 
in  1905.  We  sat  through  a  long  Sunday  afternoon 
in  the  mayor's  office  in  the  City  Hall,  talking  first 
with  the  labor  men  and  then  with  the  group  of 
capitalists.  The  undertaking  was  the  more  futile 
in  that  we  were  all  practically  the  dupes  of  a  new 
type  of  "industrial  conspiracy"  successfully  in- 
augurated in  Chicago  by  a  close  compact  between 
the  coal  teamsters'  union  and  the  coal  team  owners' 
association  who  had  formed  a  kind  of  monopoly 
hitherto  new  to  a  monopoly-ridden  public. 

The  stormy  teamsters'  strike,  ostensibly  under- 
taken in  defense  of  the  garment  workers,  but  really 
arising  from  causes  so  obscure  and  dishonorable 
that  they  have  never  yet  been  made  public,  was 


LABOR  LEGISLATION   IN   ILLINOIS    225 

the  culmination  of  a  type  of  trades-unions  which 
had  developed  in  Chicago  during  the  preceding 
decade  in  which  corruption  had  flourished  al- 
most as  openly  as  it  had  previously  done  in  the 
City  Hall.  This  corruption  sometimes  took  the 
form  of  grafting  after  the  manner  of  Samuel 
Parks  in  New  York ;  sometimes  that  of  political 
deals  in  the  "  delivery  of  the  labor  vote  "  ;  and  some- 
times that  of  a  combination  between  capital  and 
labor  hunting  together.  At  various  times  during 
these  years  the  better  type  of  trades-unionists  had 
made  a  firm  stand  against  this  corruption  and  a  de- 
termined eifort  to  eradicate  it  from  the  labor  move- 
ment, not  unlike  the  general  reform  eflPort  of  many 
American  cities  against  political  corruption.  This 
reform  movement  in  the  Chicago  Federation  of 
Labor  had  its  martyrs,  and  more  than  one  man 
nearly  lost  his  life  through  the  ''slugging"  methods 
employed  by  the  powerful  corruptionists.  And 
yet  even  in  the  midst  of  these  things  were  found 
touching  examples  of  fidelity  to  the  earlier  prin- 
ciples of  brotherhood  totally  untouched  by  the 
corruption.  At  one  time  the  scrub  women  in  the 
downtown  office  buildings  had  a  union  of  their  own 
affiliated  with  the  elevator  men  and  the  janitors. 
Although  the  union  was  used  merely  as  a  weapon 
in  the  fight  of  the  coal  teamsters  against  the  use  of 
natural  gas  in  downtown  buildings,  it  did  not 
prevent  the  women  from  getting  their  first  glimpse 
into  the  fellowship  and  the  sense  of  protection  which 


226    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 


^-^ 


IS  the  great  gift  of  trades-unionism  to  the  unskilled, 
unbefriended  worker.  I  remember  in  a  meeting 
held  at  Hull-House  one  Sunday  afternoon,  that 
the  president  of  a  ^' local"  of  scrub  women  stood  up 
to  relate  her  experience.  She  told  first  of  the  long 
years  in  which  the  fear  of  losing  her  job  and  the 
fluctuating  pay  were  harder  to  bear  than  the  hard 
work  itself,  when  she  had  regarded  all  the  other 

women  who  scrubbed  in 
the  same  building  merely 
as  rivals  and  was  most 
afraid  of  the  most  miser- 
able, because  they  offered 
to  work  for  less  and  less  as 
they  were  pressed  harder 
and  harder  by  debt.  Then 
she  told  of  the  change 
that  had  come  when  the 
elevator  men  and  even 
the  lordly  janitors  had  talked  to  her  about  an 
organization  and  had  said  that  they  must  all 
stand  together.  She  told  how  gradually  she  came 
to  feel  sure  of  her  job  and  of  her  regular  pay,  and 
she  was  even  starting  to  buy  a  house  now  that  she 
could  "calculate"  how  much  she  "could  have  for 
sure."  Neither  she  nor  any  of  the  other  mem- 
bers knew  that  the  same  combination  which  had 
organized  the  scrub  women  into  a  union,  later 
destroyed  it  during  a  strike  inaugurated  for  their 
own  purposes. 


LABOR   LEGISLATION   IN   ILLINOIS    227 

That  a  Settlement  is  drawn  into  the  labor  issues 
of  its  city  can  seem  remote  to  its  purpose  only  to 
those  who  fail  to  realize  that  so  far  as  the  present 
industrial  system  thwarts  our  ethical  demands,  not 
only  for  social  righteousness  but  for  social  order, 
a    Settlement  is  committed  to  an  effort  to  under- 
stand and,  as  far  as  possible,  to  alleviate  it.     That 
in  this  effort  it  should  be  drawn  into  fellowship  with 
the  local  efforts  of  trades-unions  is  most  obvious. 
This    identity    of    aim    apparently    commits    the 
Settlement  in  the  public  mind  to  all  the  faiths  and 
works  of  actual  trades-unions.    Fellowship  has  so 
long  implied  similarity  of  creed  that  the  fact  that 
the  Settlement  often  differs  widely  from  the  policy 
pursued  by  trades-unionists    and  clearly  expresses 
that  difference,  does  not  in  the  least  change  public 
opinion    in    regard    to    its    identification.     This   is 
especially  true  in  periods  of  industrial  disturbance, 
although  it  is  exactly  at  such  moments  that  the 
trades-unionists    themselves    are   suspicious   of   all 
but   their   ''own   kind."     It   is    during   the   much 
longer   periods    between    strikes    that   the    Settle- 
ment's fellowship  with  trades-unions  is  most  satis- 
factory in  the  agitation  for  labor  legislation  and 
similar    undertakings.     The    first    officers    of    the 
Chicago  Woman's  Trades  Union  League  were  resi- 
dents of  Settlements,  although  they  can  claim  little 
share  in  the  later   record  the  League  made  in  se- 
curing the  passage  of  the  Illinois  Ten-Hour  Law  for 
Women  and  in  its  many  other  fine  undertakings. 


228     TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

Nevertheless  the  reaction  of  strikes  upon  Chicago 
Settlements  affords  an  interesting  study  in  social 
psychology.  For  whether  Hull-House  is  in  any 
wise  identified  with  the  strike  or  not,  makes  no 
difference.  When  "Labor"  is  in  disgrace  we  are 
always  regarded  as  belonging  to  it  and  share  the 
opprobrium.  In  the  public  excitement  following 
the  Pullman  strike  Hull-House  lost  many  friends ; 
later  the  teamsters'  strike  caused  another  such  de- 
fection, although  my  office  in  both  cases  had  been 
solely  that  of  a  duly  appointed  arbitrator. 

There  is,  however,  a  certain  comfort  in  the 
assumption  I  have  often  encountered  that  wherever 
one's  judgment  might  place  the  justice  of  a  given 
situation,  it  is  understood  that  one's  sympathy  is 
not  alienated  by  wrongdoing,  and  that  through  this 
sympathy  one  is  still  subject  to  vicarious  suffering. 
I  recall  an  incident  during  a  turbulent  Chicago 
strike  which  brought  me  much  comfort.  On  the 
morning  of  the  day  of  a  luncheon  to  which  I  had 
accepted  an  invitation,  the  waitress,  whom  I  did 
not  know,  said  to  my  prospective  hostess  that  she 
was  sure  I  could  not  come.  Upon  being  asked  for 
her  reason  she  replied  that  she  had  seen  in  the  morn- 
ing paper  that  the  strikers  had  killed  a  "scab"  and 
she  was  sure  that  I  would  feel  quite  too  badly  about 
such  a  thing,  to  be  able  to  keep  a  social  engagement. 
In  spite  of  the  confused  issues,  she  evidently  real- 
ized my  despair  over  the  violence  In  a  strike  quite 
as  definitely  as  if  she  had  been  told  about  It.     Per- 


LABOR  LEGISLATION   IN   ILLINOIS    229 

haps  that  sort  of  suffering  and  the  attempt  to 
interpret  opposing  forces  to  each  other  will  long 
remain  a  function  of  the  Settlement,  unsatisfactory 
and  difficult  as  the  role  often  becomes. 

There  has  gradually  developed  between  the  vari- 
ous   Settlements    of    Chicago    a    warm    fellowship 
founded   upon    a   like-mindedness    resulting   from 
similar  experiences,  quite  as  identity  of  interest  and 
endeavor  develop  an  enduring  relation  between  the 
residents  of  the  same  Settlement.     This  sense  of 
comradeship  is  never  stronger  than  during  the  hard- 
ships and  perplexities  of  a  strike  of  unskilled  workers 
revolting  against  the  conditions  which  drag  them 
even  below  the  level  of  their  European  life.    At  such 
times  the  residents. in  various  Settlements  are  driven 
to  a  standard  of  life  argument  running  somewhat  in 
this  wise,  —  that  as  the  very  existence  of  the  State  de- 
pends upon  the  character  of  its  citizens,  therefore  if 
certain  industrial  conditions  are  forcing  the  workers 
below  the  standard  of  decency,  it  becomes  possible    ■ 
to  deduce  the  right  of  State  regulation.     Even  as      .: 
late  as  the  stockyard  strike  this  line  of  argument      \ 
was  denounced  as  ''  socialism  "  although  it  has  since       \ 
been  confirmed  as  wise  statesmanship  by  a  decision     / 
of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States  which     I 
was  apparently  secured  through  the  masterly  argu-    / 
ment  of  the  Brandeis  brief  in  the  Oregon  ten-hour  / 
case. 

In  such  wise  the  residents  of  an  industrial  neigh- 
borhood gradually  comprehend  the  close  connection 


230    TWENTY   YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

of  their  own  difficulties  with  national  and  even 
international  movements.  The  residents  in  the 
Chicago  Settlements  became  pioneer  members  in 
the  American  branch  of  the  International  League 
for  Labor  Legislation,  because  their  neighborhood 
experiences  had  made  them  only  too  conscious  of 
the  dire  need  for  protective  legislation.  In  such  a 
league,  with  its  ardent  members  in  every  industrial 
nation  of  Europe,  with  its  encouraging  reports  of 
the  abolition  of  all  night  work  for  women  in  six 
European  nations,  with  its  careful  observations  on 
the  results  of  employer's  liability  legislation  and 
protection  of  machinery,  one  becomes  identified 
with  a  movement  of  world-wide  significance  and 
manifold  manifestation. 


CHAPTER  XI 

Immigrants  and  Their  Children 

From  our  very  first  months  at  Hull-House  we 
found  it  much  easier  to  deal  with  the  first  genera- 
tion of  crowded  city  life  than  with  the  second  or 
third,  because  it  is  more  natural  and  cast  in  a  sim- 
pler mold.  The  Italian  and  Bohemian  peasants 
who  live  in  Chicago,  still  put  on  their  bright  holiday 
clothes  on  a  Sunday  and  go  to  visit  their  cousins. 
They  tramp  along  with  at  least  a  suggestion  of 
having  once  walked  over  plowed  fields  and  breathed 
country  air.  The  second  generation  of  city  poor 
too  often  have  no  holiday  clothes  and  consider 
their  relations  a  ''bad  lot."  I  have  heard  a  drunken 
man  in  a  maudlin  stage,  babble  of  his  good  country 
mother  and  imagine  he  was  driving  the  cows  home, 
and  I  knew  that  his  little  son  who  laughed  loud 
at  him,  would  be  drunk  earlier  in  life  and  would 
have  no  such  pastoral  interlude  to  his  ravings. 
Hospitality  still  survives  among  foreigners,  al- 
though it  is  buried  under  false  pride-  among,  the 
poorest  Americans,  ^tie'  thing^  seemed  clear  m^ 
regard  to  entertaining  immigrants  ;  to  preserve  and  ij 
keep  whatever  of  value  their  past  life  contained 
and  to  bring  them  in  contact  with  a  better  type  of  n>^ 

231  C7f/^ 


232    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

Americans.  For  several  years,  every  Saturday 
evening  the  entire  families  of  our  Italian  neighbors 
were  our  guests.  These  evenings  were  very  popu- 
lar during  our  first  winters  at  Hull-House.  Many 
educated  Italians  helped  us,  and  the  house  became 
known  as  a  place  where  Italians  were  welcome  and 
where  national  holidays  were  observed.  They 
come  to  us  with  their  petty  lawsuits,  sad  relics  of 
the  vendetta,  with  their  Incorrigible  boys,  with  their 
hospital  cases,  with  their  aspirations  for  American 
clothes,  and  with  their  needs  for  an  interpreter. 

An  editor  of  an  Italian  paper  made  a  genuine 
connection  between  us  and  the  Italian  colony,  not 
only  with  the  Neapolitans  and  the  Sicilians  of  the 
immediate  neighborhood,  but  with  the  educated 
connazionali  throughout  the  city,  until  he  went  south 
to  start  an  agricultural  colony  In  Alabama,  in  the 
establishment  of  which  Hull-House  heartily  cooper- 
ated. 

Possibly  the  South  Italians  more  than  any  other 
Immigrants  represent  the  pathetic  stupidity  of 
agricultural  people  crowded  into  city  tenements, 
and  we  were  much  gratified  when  thirty  peasant 
families  were  induced  to  move  upon  the  land  which 
they  knew  so  well  how  to  cultivate.  The  starting 
of  this  colony,  however,  was  a  very  expensive  affair 
in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  colonists  purchased 
the  land  at  two  dollars  an  acre  ;  they  needed  much 
more  than  raw  land,  and  although  it  was  possible 
to  collect  the  small  sums  necessary  to  sustain  them 


IMMIGRANTS,  THEIR   CHILDREN     233 

during  the  hard  time  of  the  first  two  years,  we  were 
fully  convinced  that  undertakings  of  this  sort  could 
be  conducted  properly  only  by  colonization  socie- 
ties such  as  England  has  established,  or,  better 
still,  by  enlarging  the  functions  of  the  Federal  De- 
partment of  Immigration. 

An  evening  similar  in  purpose  to  the  one  devoted 
to  the  Italians  was  organized  for  the  Germans,  in 
our  first  year.  Owing  to  the  superior  education  of 
our  Teutonic  guests  and  the  clever  leading  of  a 
cultivated  German  woman,  these  evenings  reflected 
something  of  that  cozy  social  intercourse  which 
is  found  in  its  perfection  in  the  fatherland.  Our 
guests  sang  a  great  deal  in  the  tender  minor  of  the 
German  folksong  or  in  the  rousing  spirit  of  the 
Rhine,  and  they  slowly  but  persistently  pursued  a 
course  in  German  history  and  literature,  recovering 
something  of  that  poetry  and  romance  which  they 
had  long  since  resigned  with  other  good  things. 
We  found  strong  family  affection  between  them 
and  their  English-speaking  children,  but  their 
pleasures  were  not  in  common,  and  they  seldom 
went  out  together.  Perhaps  the  greatest  value  of 
the  Settlement  to  them  was  in  placing  large  and 
pleasant  rooms  with  musical  facilities  at  their  dis- 
posal, and  in  reviving  their  almost  forgotten  enthu- 
siasms. I  have  seen  sons  and  daughters  stand  in 
complete  surprise  as  their  mother's  knitting  needles 
softly  beat  time  to  the  song  she  was  singing,  or  her 
worn  face  turned  rosy  under  the  hand-clapping  as 


234    TWENTY   YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

she  made  an  old-fashioned  courtsey  at  the  end  of  a 
German  poem.  It  was  easy  to  fancy  a  growing 
touch  of  respect  in  her  children's  manner  to  her, 
and  a  rising  enthusiasm  for  German  literature  and 
reminiscence  on  the  part  of  all  the  family,  an  effort 
to  bring  together  the  old  life  and  the  new,  a  respect 
for  the  older  cultivation,  and  not  quite  so  much 
assurance  that  the  new  was  the  best. 

This  tendency  upon  the  part  of  the  older  immi- 
grants to  lose  the  amenities  of  European  life  without 
sharing  those  of  America,  has  often  been  deplored 
by  keen  observers  from  the  home  countries.  When 
Professor  Masurek  of  Prague  gave  a  course  of 
lectures  in  the  University  of  Chicago,  he  was  much 
distressed  over  the  materialism  into  which  the 
Bohemians  of  Chicago  had  fallen.  The  early 
immigrants  had  been  so  stirred  by  the  opportunity 
to  own  real  estate,  an  appeal  perhaps  to  the  Slavic 
land  hunger,  and  their  energies  had  become  so 
completely  absorbed  in  money-making  that  all 
other  interests  had  apparently  dropped  away.  And 
yet  I  recall  a  very  touching  incident  in  connection 
with  a  lecture  Professor  Masurek  gave  at  Hull- 
House,  in  which  he  had  appealed  to  his  countrymen 
to  arouse  themselves  from  this  tendency  to  fall 
below  their  home  civilization  and  to  forget  the  great 
enthusiasm  which  had  united  them  into  the  Pan- 
Slavic  Movement.  A  Bohemian  widow  who  sup- 
ported herself  and  her  two  children  by  scrubbing, 
hastily  sent  her  youngest  child  to  purchase,  with 


IMMIGRANTS,  THEIR   CHILDREN     235 


the  twenty-five  cents  which  was  to  have  supplied 
them  with  food  the  next  day,  a  bunch  of  red  roses 
which  she  presented  to  the  lecturer  in  appreciation 
of  his  testimony  to  the  reality  of  the  things  of  the 
spirit. 

An  overmastering  desire  to  reveal  the  humbler 
immigrant  parents  to  their  own  children  lay  at  the 
base  of  what  has   come  .^ 

to  be  called  the  Hull- 
House  Labor  Museum. 
This  was  first  suggested 
to  my  mind  one  early 
spring  day  when  I  saw 
an  old  Italian  woman, 
her  distaff  against  her 
homesick  face,  patiently 
spinning  a  thread  by  the 
simple  stick  spindle  so 
reminiscent  of  all  south- 
ern Europe.  I  was  walk- 
ing down  Polk  Street, 
perturbed  in  spirit,  be- 
cause it  seemed  so  difficult  to  come  into  genuine 
relations  with  the  Italian  women  and  because  they 
themselves  so  often  lost  their  hold  upon  their 
Americanized  children.  It  seemed  to  me  that 
Hull-House  ought  to  be  able  to  devise  some  edu- 
cational enterprise,  which  should  build  a  bridge 
between  European  and  American  experiences  in 
such  wise  as  to  give  them  both  more  meaning  and 


/ 


V 


236    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

a  sense  of  relation.  I  meditated  that  perhaps  the 
power  to  see  life  as  a  whole,  is  more  needed  in  the 
immigrant  quarter  of  a  large  city  than  anywhere 
.  else,  and  that  the  lack  of  this  power  is  the  most 
\  fruitful  source  of  misunderstanding  between  Euro- 
pean immigrants  and  their  children,  as  it  is  between 
them  and  their  American  neighbors  ;  and  why  should 
that  chasm  between  fathers  and  sons,  yawning  at 
the  feet  of  each  generation,  be  made  so  unneces- 
sarily cruel  and  impassable  to  these  bewildered 
immigrants  ?  Suddenly  I  looked  up  and_saw  the 
old  woman  with  her  distaff,  sitting  in  the  sun  on 
the  steps  of  a  tenement  house.  She  might  have 
served  as  a  model  for  one  of  Michael  Angelo's 
Fates,  but  her  face  brightened  as  I  passed  and, 
holding  up  her  spindle  for  me  to  see,  she  called  out 
that  when  she  had  spun  a  little  more  yarn,  she 
would  knit  a  pair  of  stockings  for  her  goddaughter. 
The  occupation  of  the  old  woman  gave  me  the  clew 
that  was  needed.  Could  we  not  interest  the  young 
people  working  in  the  neighboring  factories,  in  these 
j  older  forms  of  industry,  so  that,^  through  their 
own  parents  and  grandparents,  they  would  ffnd^  a 
dramatic  representation  of  the  inherited  reliources 
of  their  daily  occupation.  If  these  young  people 
could  actually  see  that  the  complicated  machinery 
of  the  factory  had  been  evolved  from  simple  toots, 
they  might  at  least  make  a  beginning  towards  tliat 
education  which  Dr.  Dewey  defines  as  "a  contmu- 
ing   reconstruction  of  experience."      They  might 


IMMIGRANTS,  THEIR   CHILDREN    237 

also  lay  a  foundation  for  reverence  of  the  past 
which  Goethe  declares  to  be  the  basis  of  all  sound 
progress. 

My  exciting  walk  on  Polk  Street  was  followed 
by  many  talks  with  Dr.  Dewey  and  with  one  of  the 
teachers  in  his  school  who  was  a  resident  at  Hull-  -^ 
House.     Within  a  month  a  room  was  fitted  up  to  /  . 
which  we  might  invite  those  of  our  neighbors  who    \ 
were  possessed  of  old  crafts'  and  who  were  eager  to      ) 
use  them.  v  _^ 

We  found  in  the  immediate  neighborhood,  at  least 
four  varieties  of  these  most  primitive  methods  of 
spinning  and  three  distinct  variations  of  the  same 
spindle  in  connection  with  wheels.     It  was  possible 
to  put  these  seven  into  historic  sequence  and  order.      • 
and  to  connect  the  whole  with  the  present  method) 
of  factory  spinning.     The  same  thing  was  done  for/ 
weaving,   and  on  every  Saturday  evening  a  little^ 
exhibit  was  made  of  these  various  forms  of  labor  In    / 
the  textile  Industry.     Within  one  room  a  Syrian    ( 
woman,  a  Greek,  an  Italian,  a  Russian,  and  an  Irish-    \ 
woman  enabled  even  the  most  casual  observer  to    J 
see  that  there  Is  no  break  In  orderly  evolution  if 
we  look  at  history  from  the  industrial  standpoint ; 
that    industry   develops    similarly    and    peacefully 
year  by  year  among  the  workers  of  each  nation, 
heedless   of  difll'erences   In  language,  religion,  and 
political  experiences. 

And  then  we  grew  ambitious  and  arranged  lec- 
tures upon  industrial  history.     I  remember  that 


238    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

after  an  interesting   lecture    upon    the    industrial 
revolution    in    England    and    a    portrayal    of    the 


appalling  conditions  throughout  the  weaving  dis- 
tricts of  the  north,  which  resulted  from  the  hasty 
gathering  of  the  weavers  into  the  new  towns,  a 


IMMIGRANTS,  THEIR   CHILDREN     239 

Russian  tailor  in  the  audience  was  moved  to  make  a 
speech.     He  suggested  that  whereas  time  had  done 


much  to  alleviate  the  first  difficulties  In  the  transi- 
tion of  weaving  from  hand  work  to  steam  power, 
that  In  the  application  of  steam  to  sewing  we  are 
still  in  the  first  stages,  illustrated  by  the  Isolated 
woman  who  tries  to  support  herself  by  hand  needle- 


240    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

work  at  home  until  driven  out  by  starvation,  as 
many  of  the  hand  weavers  had  been. 

The  historical  analogy  seemed  to  bring  a  certain 
comfort  to  the  tailor  as  did  a  chart  upon  the  wall, 
showing  the  infinitesimal  amount  of  time  that 
steam  had  been  applied  to  manufacturing  processes 
compared  to  the  centuries  of  hand  labor.  Human 
progress  is  slow  and  perhaps  never  more  cruel  than 
in  the  advance  of  industry,  but  is  not  the  worker 
comforted  by  knowing  that  other  historicaFperiods 
have  existed  similar  to  the  one  in  which  he  finds 
himself,  and  that  the  readjustment  may  be  short- 
ened and  alleviated  by  judicious  action ;  and  is  he 
not  entitled  to  the  solace  which  an  artistic  portrayal 
of  the  situation  might  give  him  ^  I  remember  the 
evening  of  the  tailor's  speech  that  I  felt  reproached 
because  no  poet  or  artist  has  endeared  the  sweaters' 
victim  to  us  as  George  Eliot  has  made  us  love  the 
belated  weaver,  Silas  Marner.  The  textile  museum 
is  connected  directly  with  the  basket  weaving,  sew- 
ing, millinery,  embroidery,  and  dressmaking  con- 
stantly being  taught  at  Hull-House,  and  so  far  as 
possible  with  the  other  educational  departments ; 

"^     we  have  also  been  able  to  make  a  collection  of  prod- 
ucts, of  early  implements,  and  of  photographs  which 

\  are  full  of  suggestion.  Yet  far  beyond  its^irect 
j  .  educational  value,  we  prize  it  because  it  so  often 

vT^puts  the  immigrants  into  the  position  of  teachers, 
I  vand  we  imagine  that  it  aflPords  them  a  pleasant 
\     change  from  the  tutelage  in  which  all  Americans, 


IMMIGRANTS,  THEIR   CHILDREN     241 

including  their  own  children,  are  so  apt  to  hold 
them.  I  recall  a  number  of  Russian  women  work- 
ing in  a  sewing-room  near  Hull-House,  who  heard 
one  Christmas  week  that  the  House  was  going  to 
give  a  party  to  which  they  might  come.  They 
arrived  one  afternoon  when,  unfortunately,  there 


was  no  party  on  hand  and,  although  the  residents 
did  their  best  to  entertain  them  with  impromptu 
music  and  refreshments,  it  was  quite  evident  that 
they  were  greatly  disappointed.  Finally  it  was 
suggested  that  they  be  shown  the  Labor  Aluseum 
—  where  gradually  the  thirty  sodden,  tired  women 
were  transformed.  They  knew  how  to  use  the 
spindles  and  were  delighted  to  find  the  Russian 
spinning  frame.     Many  of  them  had  never  seen  the 


242    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

spinning  wheel,  which  has  not  penetrated  to  certain 
parts  of  Russia,  and  they  regarded  it  as  a  new  and 
wonderful  invention.     They  turned  up  their  dresses 
to  show  their  homespun  petticoats  ;   they  tried  the 
looms ;    they  explained    the    difficulty  of   the    old 
patterns  ;  in  short,  from  having  been  stupidly  enter- 
tained, they  themselves  did  the  entertaining.     Be- 
Icause  of  a  direct  appeal  to  former  experiences,  the 
/immigrant  visitors  were  able  for  the  moment  to 
/instruct  their  American   hostesses   in   an   old   and 
I  honored   craft,   as  was   indeed  becoming  to  their 
vage  and  experience. 

In  some  such  ways  as  these  have  the  Labor 
Museum  and  the  shops  pointed  out  the  possibili- 
ties which  Hull-House  has  scarcely  begun  to  develop, 
of  demonstrating  that  culture  is  an  understanding 
of  the  long-established  occupations  and  thoughts  . 
of  men,  of  the  arts  with  which  they  have  solaced 
their  toil.  A  yearning  to  recover  for  the  household  ^ 
arts  something  of  their  early  sanctity  and  meaning; 
-arose  strongly  within  me  one  evening  when  I  was 
attending  a  Passover  Feast  to  which  I  had  been 
invited  by  a  Jewish  family  in  the  neighborhood, 
where  the  traditional  and  religious  significance  of 
woman's  daily  activity  was  still  retained.  The 
kosher  food  the  Jewish  mother  spread  before  her 
family  had  been  prepared  according  to  traditional 
knowledge  and  with  constant  care  in  the  use  of 
utensils  ;  upon  her  had  fallen  the  responsibility  to 
make  all  ready  according  to  Mosaic  instructions 


IMMIGRANTS,   THEIR   CHILDREN     243 

that  the  great  crisis  in  a  religious  history  might  be 
fittingly  set  forth  by  her  husband  and  son.  Aside 
from  the  grave  religious  signj'ficance  in  the  cere- 
mony, my  mind  was  filled  with  shifting  pictures  of 
woman's  labor  with  which  travel  makes  one  fa- 
miliar ;  the  Indian  women  grinding  grain  outside 
of  their  huts  as  they  sing  praises  to  the  sun  and 
rain ;  a  file  of  white-clad  A/[oorIsh  women  whom  I 
had  once  seen  waiting  their  turn  at  a  well  in  Tan- 
giers ;  south  Italian  women  kneeling  in  a  row 
along  the  stream  and  beating  their  wet  clothes 
against  the  smooth  white  stones  ;  the  milking,  the 
gardening,  the  marketing  in  thousands  of  hamlets, 
which  are  such  direct  expressions  of  the  solicitude 
and  affection  at  the  basis  of  all  family  life. 

There  has  been  some  testimony  that  the  Labor 
Museum  has  revealed  the  charm  of  woman's 
primitive  activities.  I  recall  a  certain  Italian  girl 
who  came  every  Saturday  evening  to  a  cooking 
class  in  the  same  building  In  which  her  mother  spun 
in  the  Labor  Museum  exhibit ;  and  yet  Angelina 
always  left  her  mother  at  the  front  door  while  she 
herself"went  around  to  a  side  door  because  she  did 
not  wish  to  be  too  closely  identified  in  the  eyes  of 
the  rest  of  the  cooking  class  with  an  Italian  woman 
who  wore  a  kerchief  over  her  head,  uncouth  boots, 
and  short  petticoats.  One  evening,  however,  An- 
gelina saw  her  mother  surrounded  by  a  group  of 
visitors  from  the  School  of  Education,  who  much 
admired  the  spinning,  and  she  concluded  from  their 


244    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

conversation  that  her  mother  was  "the  best  stick- 
spindle  spinner  in  America."  When  she  inquired 
from  me  as  to  the  truth  of  this  deduction,  I  took 
occasion  to  describe  the  Italian  village  in  which  her 
mother  had  lived,  something  of  her  free  life,  and  how, 
because  of  the  opportunity  she  and  the  other  women 
of  the  village  had  to  drop  their  spindles  over  the 
edge  of  a  precipice,  they  had  developed  a  skill  in 
spinning  beyond  that  of  the  neighboring  towns. 
I  dilated  somewhat  on  the  freedom  and  beauty  of 
that  life  —  how  hard  it  must  be  to  exchange  it 
all  for  a  two-room  tenement,  and  to  give  up  a 
beautiful  homespun  kerchief  for  an  ugly  de- 
partment store  hat.  I  intimated  it  was  most 
unfair  to  judge  her  by  these  things  alone,  and 
f  that  while  she  must  depend  on  her  daughter  to 
learn  the  new  ways,  she  also  had  a  right  to  ex- 
pect her  daughter  to  know  something  of  the  old 
ways. 

That  which  I  could  not  convey  to  the  child  but 
upon  which  my  own  mind  persistently  dwelt,  was 
that  her  mother's  whole  life  had  been  spent  in  a 
secluded  spot  under  the  rule  of  traditional  and 
narrowly  localized  observances,  until  her  very  re- 
ligion clung  to  local  sanctities,  —  to  the  shrine  before 
which  she  had  always  prayed,  to  the  pavement 
and  walls  of  the  low  vaulted  church,  —  and  then 
suddenly  she  was  torn  from  It  all  and  literally  put 
out  to  sea,  straight  away  from  the  solid  habits  of 
her  religious  and  domestic  life,  and  she  now  walked 


IMMIGRANTS,  THEIR   CHILDREN     245 

timidly  but  with  poignant  sensibility  upon  a  new 
and  strange  shore. 

It  was  easy  to  see  that  the  thought  of  her  mother 
with  any  other  background  than  that  of  the  tene- 
ment was  new  to  Angelina  and  at  least  two  things 
resulted  ;  she  allowed  her  mother  to  pull  out  of  the 
big  box  under  the  bed  the  beautiful  homespun 
garments  which  had  been  previously  hidden  away 
as  uncouth ;  and  she  openly  came  into  the  Labor 
Museum  by  the  same  door  as  did  her  mother,  proud 
at  least  of  the  mastery  of  the  craft  which  had  been 
so  much  admired. 

A  club  of  necktie  workers  formerly  meeting 
at  Hull-House,  persistently  resented  any  attempt 
on  the  part  of  their  director  to  improve  their 
minds.  The  president  once  said  that  she  ''wouldn't 
be  caught  dead  at  a  lecture,"  that  she  came  to  the 
club  "to  get  some  fun  out  of  it,"  and  Indeed  It  was 
most  natural  that  she  should  crave  recreation  after 
a  hard  day's  work.  One  evening  I  saw  the  entire 
club  listening  to  quite  a  stiff  lecture  in  the  Labor 
Museum  and  to  my  rather  wicked  remark  to  the 
president  that  I  was  surprised  to  see  her  enjoying 
a  lecture,  she  replied,  that  she  did  not  call  this  a 
lecture,  she  called  this  "getting  next  to  the  stuff 
you  work  with  all  the  time."  It  was  perhaps  the 
sincerest  tribute  we  have  ever  received  as  to  the 
success  of  the  undertaking. 

The  Labor  Museum  continually  demanded  more 
space  as  it  was  enriched  by  a  fin^textile  exhibit 


246    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

lent  by  the  Field  Museum,  and  later  by  carefully 
selected  specimens  of  basketry  from  the  Philip- 
pines. The  shops  have  finally  included  a  group  of 
three  or  four  women,  Irish,  Italian,  Danish,  who 
have  become  a  permanent  working  force  in  the 
textile  department  which  has  developed  into  a 
self-supporting  industry  through  the  sale  of  its 
homespun  products. 

These~\vomen  and  a  few  men,  who  come  to  the 
museum  to  utilize  their  European  skill  in  pottery, 
metal,  and  wood,  demonstrate  that  immigrant 
colonies  might  yield  to  our  American  life  something 
very  valuable,  if  their  resources  were  intelligently 
studied  and  developed.  I  recall  an  Italian,  who 
had  decorated  the  doorposts  of  his  tenement  with  a 
beautiful  pattern  he  had  previously  used  in  carv--^ 
ing  the  reredos  of  a  Neapolitan  church,  who  was 
''fired"  by  his  landlord  on  the  ground  of  destroying 
property.  His  feelings  were  hurt,  not  so  much  that 
he  had  been  put  out  of  his  house,  as  that  his  work 
had  been  so  disregarded  ;  and  he  said  that  when 
people  traveled  in  Italy  they  liked  to  look  at  wood 
carvings  but  that  in  America  "they  only  made 
money  out  of  you." 

Sometimes  the  suppression  of  the  instinct  of 
workmanship  is  followed  by  more  disastrous  re- 
sults. A  Bohemian  whose  little  girl  attended  classes 
at  Hull-House,  in  one  of  his  periodic  drunken  spells 
had  literally  almost  choked  her  to  death,  and  later 
had  committed  suicide  when  in  delirium  tremens. 


IMMIGRANTS,  THEIR   CHILDREN     247 

His  poor  wife,  who  stayed  a  week  at  Hull-House 
after  the  disaster  until  a  new  tenement  could  be  ar- 
ranged for  her,  one  day  showed  me  a  gold  ring  which 
her  husband  had  made  for  their  betrothal.  It 
exhibited  the  most  exquisite  workmanship,  and  she 
said  that  although  in  the  old  country  he  had  been  a 
goldsmith,  in  America  he  had  for  twenty  years 
shoveled  coal  in  a  furnace  room  of  a  large  manu- 
facturing plant;  that  whenever  she  saw  one  of 
his  "restless  fits,"  which  preceded  his  drunken 
periods,  ''coming  on,"  if  she  could  provide  him 
with  a  bit  of  metal  and  persuade  him  to  stay  at 
home  and  work  at  it,  he  was  all  right  and  the  time 
passed  without  disaster,  but  that  ''nothing  else 
would  do  it."  This  story  threw  a  flood  of  light 
upon  the  dead  man's  struggle  and  on  the  stupid 
maladjustment  which  had  broken  him  down. 
Why  had  we  never  been  told  ^  Why  had  our  in- 
terest in  the  remarkable  musical  ability  of  his  child, 
blinded  us  to  the  hidden  artistic  ability  of  the 
father  .?  We  had  forgotten  that  a  long-established 
occupation  may  form  the  very  foundations  of  the 
moral  life,  that  the  art  with  which  a  man  has 
solaced  his  toil  may  be  the  salvation  of  his  uncertain 
temperament. 

There  are  many  examples  of  touching  fidelity 
to  immigrant  parents  on  the  part  of  their  grown 
children  ;  a  young  man,  who  day  after  day,  at- 
tends ceremonies  which  no  longer  express  his  re- 
ligious convictions  and  who  makes  his  vain  effort 


248     TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

to  interest  his  Russian  Jewish  father  in  social  prob- 
lems ;  a  daughter  who  might  earn  much  more 
money  as  a  stenographer  could  she  work  from 
Monday  morning  till  Saturday  night,  but  who 
quietly  and  docilely  makes  neckties  for  low  wages 
because  she  can  thus  abstain  from  work  Saturdays 
to  please  her  father ;  these  young  people,  like 
poor  Maggie  Tulliver,  through  many  painful  ex- 
periences have  reached  the  conclusion  that  pity, 
memory,  and  faithfulness  are  natural  ties  with 
paramount  claims. 

This  faithfulness,  however,  is  sometimes  ruth- 
lessly imposed  upon  by  immigrant  parents  who, 
eager  for  money  and  accustomed  to  the  patriarchal 
authority  of  peasant  households,  hold  their  children 
in  a  stern  bondage  which  requires  a  surrender  of  all 
their  wages  and  concedes  no  time  or  money  for 
pleasures. 

There  are  m.any  convincing  illustrations  that  this 
parental  harshness  often  results  in  juvenile  de- 
linquency. A  Polish  boy  of  seventeen  came  to 
Hull-House  one  day  to  ask  a  contribution  of  fifty 
cents  "towards  a  flower  piece  for  the  funeral  of  an 
old  Hull-House  club  boy."  A  few  questions  made 
it  clear  that  the  object  was  fictitious,  whereupon  the 
boy  broke  down  and  half  defiantly  stated  that  he 
wanted  to  buy  two  twenty-five  cent  tickets,  one  for 
his  girl  and  one  for  himself,  to  a  dance  of  the  Benev- 
olent Social  Twos ;  that  he  hadn't  a  penny  of  his 
own  although  he  had  worked  in  a  brass  foundry 


B4MIGRANTS,  THEIR   CHILDREN     249 

for  three  years  and  had  been  advanced  twice,  be- 
cause he  always  had  to  give  his  pay  envelope  un- 
opened to  his  father;  ^'just  look  at  the  clothes  he 
buys  me"  was  his  concluding  remark. 

Perhaps  the  girls  are  held  even  more  rigidly.  In  a 
recent  investigation  of  two  hundred  working  girls 
it  was  found  that  only  five  per  cent  had  the  use  of 
their  own  money  and  that  sixty-two  per  cent 
turned  in  all  they  earned,  literally  every  penny,  to 
their  mothers.  It  was  through  this  little  investi- 
gation that  we  first  knew  Marcella,  a  pretty  young 
German  girl  who  helped  her  widowed  mother  year 
after  year  to  care  for  a  large  family  of  younger 
children.  She  was  content  for  the  most  part  al- 
though her  mother's  old-country  notions  of  dress 
gave  her  but  an  infinitesimal  amount  of  her  own 
wages  to  spend  on  her  clothes,  and  she  was  quite 
sophisticated  as  to  proper  dressing  because  she 
sold  silk  in  a  neighborhood  department  store.  Her 
mother  approved  of  the  young  man  who  was  show- 
ing her  various  attentions  and  agreed  that  Marcella 
should  accept  his  invitation  to  a  ball,  but  would 
allow  her  not  a  penny  towards  a  new  gown  to  re- 
place one  impossibly  plain  and  shabby.  Marcella 
spent  a  sleepless  night  and  wept  bitterly,  although 
she  well  knew  that  the  doctor's  bill  for  the  children's 
scarlet  fever  was  not  yet  paid.  The  next  day  as  she 
was  cutting  off  three  yards  of  shining  pink  silk,  the 
thought  came  to  her  that  it  would  make  her  a  fine 
new  waist  to  wear  to  the  ball.     She  wistfully  saw 


250    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

it  wrapped  in  paper  and  carelessly  stuffed  into  the 
muff  of  the  purchaser,  when  suddenly  the  parcel 
fell  upon  the  floor.  No  one  was  looking  and  quick 
as  a  flash  the  girl  picked  it  up  and  pushed  it  into 
her  blouse.  The  theft  was  discovered  by  the  relent- 
less department  store  detective  who,  for ''the  sake 
of  the  example,"  insisted  upon  taking  the  case  into 
court.  The  poor  mother  wept  bitter  tears  over 
this  downfall  of  her  ''frommes  Madchen  "  and  no 
one  had  the  heart  to  tell  her  of  her  own  blindness. 
I  know  a  Polish  boy  whose  earnings  were  all 
given  to  his  father  who  gruffly  refused  all  requests 
for  pocket  money.  One  Christmas  his  little  sisters, 
having  been  told  by  their  mother  that  they  were 
too  poor  to  have  any  Christmas  presents,  appealed 
to  the  big  brother  as  to  one  who  was  earning  money 
of  his  own.  Flattered  by  the  implication,  but  at 
the  same  time  quite  impecunious,  the  night  before 
Christmas  he  nonchalantly  walked  through  a  neigh- 
boring department  store  and  stole  a  manicure  set 
for  one  little  sister  and  a  string  of  beads  for  the 
other.  He  was  caught  at  the  door  by  the  house 
detective  as  one  of  those  children  whom  each  local 
\  department  store  arrests  in  the  weeks  before  Christ- 
mas at  the  daily  rate  of  eight  to  twenty.  The 
youngest  of  these  offenders  are  seldom  taken  into 
court  but  are  either  sent  home  with  a  warning  or 
turned  over  to  the  officers  of  the  Juvenile  Protective 
Association.  Most  of  these  premature  law  breakers 
are  in  search  of  Americanized  clothing  and  others 


IMMIGRANTS,  THEIR   CHILDREN     251 

at"e  only  looking  for  playthings.  They  are  all  dis- 
t)-acted  by  the  profusion  and  variety  of  the  display, 
and  their  moral  sense  is  confused  by  the  general  air 
of  open-handedness. 

These  disastrous  efforts  are  not  unlike  those  of 
many  younger  children  who  are  constantly  arrested 
for  petty  thieving  because  they  are  too  eager  to 
take  home  food  or  fuel  which  will  relieve  the  dis- 
tress and  need  they  so  constantly  hear  discussed. 
The  coal  on  the  wagons,  the  vegetables  displayed 
in  front  of  the  grocery  shops,  the  very  wooden 
blocks  in  the  loosened  street  paving  are  a  challenge 
to  their  powers  to  help  out  at  home.  A  Bohemian 
boy  who  was  out  on  parole  from  the  old  detention 
home  of  the  Juvenile  Court  itself,  brought  back 
five  stolen  chickens  to  the  matron  for  Sunday 
dinner,  saying  that  he  knew  the  Committee  were 
"having  a  hard  time  to  fill  up  so  many  kids  and 
perhaps  these  fowl  would  help  out."  The  honest 
immigrant  parents,  totally  ignorant  of  American 
laws  and  municipal  regulations,  often  send  a  child 
to  pick  up  coal  on  the  railroad  tracks  or  to  stand  at 
three  o'clock  in  the  morning  before  the  side  door 
of  a  restaurant  which  gives  away  broken  food, 
or  to  collect  grain  for  the  chickens  at  the  base  of 
elevators  and  standing  cars.  The  latter  custom 
accounts  for  the  large  number  of  boys  arrested  for 
breaking  the  seals  on  grain  freight  cars.  It  Is  easy 
for  a  child  thus  trained  to  accept  the  proposition  of 
a  junk  dealer  to  bring  him  bars  of  iron  stored  in 


w 


252    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

freight  yards.  Four  boys  quite  recently  had  thus 
carried  away  and  sold  to  one  man,  two  tons  of 
ron. 

Four  fifths  of  the  children  brought  into  the  Juve- 
lile  Court  in  Chicago  are  the  children  of  foreigners. 
The  Germans  are  the  greatest  offenders,  Polish 
next.  Do  their  children  suffer  from  the  excess  of 
virtue  in  those  parents  so  eager  to  own  a  house  and 
lot  ?  One  often  sees  a  grasping  parent  in  the 
court,  utterly  broken  down  when  the  Americanized 
youth  who  has  been  brought  to  grief  clings  as 
piteously  to  his  peasant  father  as  if  he  were  still  a 
frightened  little  boy  in  the  steerage. 

Many  of  these  children  have  come  to  grief 
through  their  premature  fling  Into  city  life,  having 
thrown  off  parental  control  as  they  have  impa- 
tiently discarded  foreign  ways.  Boys  of  ten  and 
twelve  will  refuse  to  sleep  at  home,  preferring  the 
freedom  of  an  old  brewery  vault  or  an  empty  ware- 
house to  the  obedience  required  by  their  parents, 
and  for  days  these  boys  will  live  on  the  milk  and 
bread  which  they  steal  from  the  back  porches  after 
the  early  mornmg  delivery.  Such  children  com- 
plain that  there  is  "no  fun"  at  home.  One  little 
chap  who  was  given  a  vacant  lot  to  cultivate  by 
the  City  Garden  Association,  insisted  upon  raising 
only  popcorn  and  tried  to  present  the  entire  crop 
to  Hull-House  "to  be  used  for  the  parties,"  with 
the  stipulation  that  he  would  have  "to  be  Invited 
every  single  time."     Then  there  are  little  groups  of 


IMMIGRANTS,  THEIR   CHILDREN     253 

dissipated  young  men  who  pride  themselves  upon 
their  ability  to  live  without  working,  and  who  de- 
spise all  the  honest  and  sober  ways  of  their  immi- 
grant parents.  They  are  at  once  a  menace  and  a 
center  of  demoralization.  Certainly  the  bewil- 
dered parents,  unable  to  speak  English  and  ignorant 
of  the  city,  whose  children  have  disappeared  for 
days  or  weeks,  have  often  come  to  Hull-House, 
evincing  that  agony  which  fairly  separates  the 
marrow  from  the  bone,  as  if  they  had  discovered 
a  new  type  of  suflFering,  devoid  of  the  healing  in 
familiar  sorrows.  It  is  as  if  they  did  not  know  how 
to  search  for  the  children  without  the  assistance 
of  the  children  themselves.  Perhaps  the  most 
pathetic  aspect  of  such  cases  is  their  revelation  of 
the  premature  dependence  of  the  older  and  wiser 
upon  the  young  and  foolish,  which  is  in  itself  often 
responsible  for  the  situation  because  it  has  given 
the  children  an  undue  sense  of  their  own  importance 
and  a  false  security  that  they  can  take  care  of  them- 
selves. 

On  the  other  hand,  an  Italian  girl  who  has  had 
lessons  in  cooking  at  the  public  school,  will  help  her 
mother  to  connect  the  entire  family  with  American 
food  and  household  habits.  That  the  mother  has 
never  baked  bread  in  Italy  —  only  mixed  it  in  her 
own  house  and  then  taken  it  out  to  the  village  oven 
—  makes  all  the  more  valuable  her  daughter's 
understanding  of  the  complicated  cooking  stove. 
The  same  thing  is  true  of  the  girl  who  learns  to  sew 


254    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

in  the  public  school,  and  more  than  anything  else, 
perhaps,  of  the  girl  who  receives  the  first  simple 
instruction  in  the  care  of  little  children,  —  that  skill- 
ful care  which  every  tenement-house  baby  requires 
if  he  is  to  be  pulled  through  his  second  summer.  As 
a  result  of  this  teaching  I  recall  a  young  girl  who 
carefully  explained  to  her  Italian  mother  that  the 
reason  the  babies  in  Italy  were  so  healthy  and  the 
babies  in  Chicago  were  so  sickly,  was  not,  as  her 
mother  had  firmly  insisted,  because  her  babies  in 
Italy  had  goat's  milk  and  her  babies  in  America 
had  cow's  milk,  but  because  the  milk  in  Italy  was 
clean  and  the  milk  in  Chicago  was  dirty.  She  said 
that  when  you  milked  your  own  goat  before  the 
door,  you  knew  that  the  milk  was  clean,  but  when 
you  bought  milk  from  the  grocery  store  after  it  had 
been  carried  for  many  miles  in  the  country,  you 
couldn't  tell  whether  or  not  it  was  fit  for  the  baby 
to  drink  until  the  men  from  the  City  Hall  who 
had  watched  it  all  the  way,  said  that  it  was  all 
right. 

Thus  through  civic  instruction  in  the  public 
schools,  the  Italian  woman  slowly  became  urban- 
ized in  the  sense  in  which  the  word  was  used  by  her 
own  Latin  ancestors,  and  thus  the  habits  of  her  entire 
family  were  modified.  The  public  schools  in  the  im- 
migrant colonies  deserve  all  the  praise  as  Ameri- 
canizing agencies  which  can  be  bestowed  upon 
them,  and  there  is  little  doubt  that  the  fast- 
changing  curriculum  in  the  direction  of  the  vaca- 


IMMIGRANTS,  THEIR   CHILDREN     255 

tion-school  experiments,  will  react  still  more  directly 
upon  such  households. 

It  is  difficult  to  write  of  the  relation  of  the  older 
and  most  foreign-looking  immigrants  to  the  chil- 
dren of  other  people,  —  the  Italians  whose  fruit- 
carts  are  upset  simply  because  they  are  "dagoes," 
or  the  Russian  peddlers  who  are  stoned  and  some- 
times badly  injured  because  it  has  become  a  code 
of  honor  in  a  gang  of  boys  to  thus  express  their 
derision.  The  members  of  a  Protective  Associa- 
tion of  Jewish  Peddlers  organized  at  Hull-House, 
related  daily  experiences  in  which  old  age  had  been 
treated  with  such  irreverence,  cherished  dignity 
with  such  disrespect,  that  a  listener  caught  the  pas- 
sion of  Lear  in  the  old  texts,  as  a  platitude  enun- 
ciated by  a  man  who  discovers  in  it  his  own  expe- 
rience, thrills  us  as  no  unfamiliar  phrases  can  pos- 
sibly do.  The  Greeks  are  filled  with  amazed  rage 
when  their  very  name  is  flung  at  them  as  an  oppro- 
brious epithet.  Doubtless  these  difficulties  would 
be  much  minimized  in  America,  if  we  faced  our  own 
race  problem  with  courage  and  intelligence,  and 
these  very  Mediterranean  immigrants  might  give 
us  valuable  help.  Certainly  they  are  less  conscious 
than  the  Anglo-Saxon  of  color  distinctions,  perhaps 
because  of  their  traditional  familiarity  with  Car- 
thage and  Egypt.  They  listened  with  respect  and 
enthusiasm  to  a  scholarly  address  delivered  by 
Professor  Du  Bois  at  Hull-House  on  a  Lincoln's 
birthday,  with  apparently  no  consciousness  of  that 


2S6    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

race  difference  which  color  seems  to  accentuate  so 
absurdly,  and  upon  my  return  from  various  confer- 
ences held  in  the  interest  of  ''the  advancement  of 
colored  people,"  I  have  had  many  illuminating 
conversations  with  my  cosmopolitan  neighbors. 

The  celebration  of  national  events  has  always 
been  a  source  of  new  understanding  anS^com- 
panionship  with  the  members  of  the  contiguous 
foreign  colonies  not  only  between  them  and  their 
American  neighbors  but  between  them  and  their 
own  children.  One  of  our  earliest  Italian  events 
was  a  rousing  commemoration  of  Garibaldi's  birth- 
day, and  his  imposing  bust  presented  to  Hull- 
House  that  evening,  was  long  the  chief  ornament 
of  our  front  hall.  It  called  forth  great  enthusiasm 
from  the  connazionali  whom  Ruskin  calls,  not 
the  ''common  people"  of  Italy,  but  the  "com- 
panion people"  because  of  their  power  for  swift 
sympathy. 

A  huge  Hellenic  meeting  held  at  Hull-House,  in 
which  the  achievements  of  the  classic  period  were 
set  forth  both  in  Greek  and  English  by  scholars  of 
well-known  repute,  brought  us  into  a  new  sense  of 
fellowship  with  all  our  Greek  neighbors.  As  the 
mayor  of  Chicago  was  seated  upon  the  right  hand 
of  the  dignified  senior  priest  of  the  Greek  Church 
and  they  were  greeted  alternately  in  the  national 
hymns  of  America  and  Greece,  one  felt  a  curious 
sense  of  the  possibility  of  transplanting  to  new  and 
crude  Chicago,  some  of  the  traditions  of  Athens 


IMMIGRANTS,  THEIR   CHILDREN    257 

itself,  so  deeply  cherished  in  the  hearts  of  this 
group  of  citizens. 

The  Greeks  indeed  gravely  consider  their  tradi- 
tions as  their  most  precious  possession  and  more 
than  once  in  meetings  of  protest  held  by  the  Greek 
colony  against  the  aggressions  of  the  Bulgarians 
in  Macedonia,  I  have  heard  it  urged  that  the  Bul- 
garians are  trying  to  establish  a  protectorate,  not 
only  for  their  immediate  advantage,  but  that  they 
may  claim  a  glorious  history  for  their  "barbarous 
country."  It  is  said  that  on  the  basis  of  this  pro- 
tectorate, they  are  already  teaching  in  their  schools 
that  Alexander  the  Great  was  a  Bulgarian  and  that 
it  will  be  but  a  short  time  before  they  claim  Aris- 
totle himself,  an  indignity  the  Greeks  will  never 
suifer  ! 

To  me  personally  the  celebration  of  the  hun- 
dredth anniversary  of  Mazzini's  birth  was  a  matter 
of  great  interest.  Throughout  the  world  that  day 
Italians  who  believed  in  a  United  Italy  came  to- 
gether. They  recalled  the  hopes  of  this  man  who, 
with  all  his  devotion  to  his  country,  was  still  more 
devoted  to  humanity  and  who  dedicated  to  the 
workingmen  of  Italy,  an  appeal  so  philosophical,  so 
filled  with  a  yearning  for  righteousness,  that  it 
transcended  all  national  boundaries  and  became 
a  bugle  call  for  "The  Duties  of  Man."  A  copy 
of  this  document  was  given  to  every  school  child 
in  the  public  schools  of  Italy  on  this  one  hundredth 
anniversary,   and   as   the   Chicago  branch    of    the 


258    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

Society  of  Young  Italy  marched  into  our  largest 
hall  and  presented  to  Hull-House  an  heroic  bust 
of  Mazzini,  I  found  myself  devoutly  hoping  that 
the  Italian  youth,  who  have  committed  their  future 
to  America,  might  indeed  become  "the  Apostles  of 
the  fraternity  of  nations"  and  that  our  American 
citizenship  might  be  built  without  disturbing  these 
foundations  which  were  laid  of  old  time. 


CHAPTER  XII 

TOLSTOYISM 

The  administration  of  charity  in  Chicago  during 
the  winter  following  the  World's  Fair  had  been  of 
necessity  most  difficult  for,  although  large  sums 
had  been  given  to  the  temporary  relief  organization 
which  endeavored  to  care  for  the  thousands  of 
destitute  strangers  stranded  in  the  city,  we  all 
worked  under  a  sense  of  desperate  need  and  a  par- 
alyzing consciousness  that  our  best  efforts  were  most 
inadequate  to  the  situation. 

During  the  many  relief  visits  I  paid  that  winter 
in  tenement  houses  and  miserable  lodgings,  I  was 
constantly  shadowed  by  a  certain  sense  of  shame 
that  I  should  be  comfortable  in  the  midst  of  such 
distress.  This  resulted  at  times  in  a  curious  re- 
action against  all  the  educational  and  philanthropic 
activities  in  which  I  had  been  engaged.  In  the  face 
of  the  desperate  hunger  and  need,  these  could  not 
but  seem  futile  and  superficial.  The  hard  winter 
in  Chicago  had  turned  the  thoughts  of  many  of  us 
to  these  stern  matters.  A  young  friend  of  mine 
who  came  daily  to  Hull-House,  consulted  me  in 
regard  to  going  into  the  paper  warehouse  belonging 
to  her  father  that  she  might  there  sort  rags  with  the 

259 


26o    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

Polish  girls ;  another  young  girl  took  a  place  in  a 
sweatshop  for  a  month,  doing  her  work  so  sirnply 
and  thoroughly  that  the  proprietor  had  no  notion 
that  she  had  not  been  driven  there  by  need ;  still 
two  others  worked  in  a  shoe  factory ;  —  and  all 
this  happened  before  such  adventures  were  un- 
dertaken in  order  to  procure  literary  material. 
It  was  in  the  following  winter  that  the  pioneer 
effort  in  this  direction,  Walter  Wyckoif's  account 
of  his  vain  attempt  to  find  work  in  Chicago,  com- 
pelled even  the  sternest  business  man  to  drop  his 
assertion  that  ''any  man  can  find  work  if  he  wants 
it." 

The  dealing  directly  with  the  simplest  human 
wants  may  have  been  responsible  for  an  impression 
which  I  carried  about  with  me  almost  constantly 
for  a  period  of  two  years  and  which  culminated 
finally  in  a  visit  to  Tolstoy,  —  that  the  Settlement, 
or  Hull-House  at  least,  was  a  mere  pretense  and 
travesty  of  the  simple  impulse  "to  live  with  the 
poor,"  so  long  as  the  residents  did  not  share  the 
common  lot  of  hard  labor  and  scant  fare. 

Actual  experience  had  left  me  in  much  the  same 
state  of  mind  I  had  been  in  after  reading  Tolstoy's 
''What  to  Do,"  which  is  a  description  of  his  futile 
efforts  to  relieve  the  unspeakable  distress  and  want 
in  the  A^Toscow  winter  of  1881,  and  his  inevitable 
conviction  that  only  he  who  literally  shares  his 
own  shelter  and  food  with  the  needy,  can  claim  to 
have  served  them. 


.    TOLSTOYISM  ^  261 

Doubtless  it  Is  much  easier  to  see  '*what  to  do" 
in  rural  Russia,  where  all  the  conditions  tend  to 
make  the  contrast  as  broad  as  possible  between 
peasant  labor  and  noble  idleness,  than  it  is  to  see 
''  what  to  do "  In  the  interdependencies  of  the 
modern  industrial  city.  But  for  that  very  rea- 
son perhaps,  Tolstoy's  clear  statement  is  valu- 
able for  that  type  of  conscientious  person  in  every 
land  who  finds  it  hard,  not  only  to  walk  in  the 
path  of  righteousness,  but  to  discover  where  the 
path  lies. 

I  had  read  the  books  of  Tolstoy  steadily  all  the 
years  since  ''My  Religion"  had  come  Into  my 
hands  immediately  after  I  left  college.  The  read- 
ing of  that  book  had  made  clear  that  men's  poor 
little  efforts  to  do  right  are  put  forth  for  the  most 
part  in  the  chill  of  self-distrust ;  I  became  convinced 
that  if  the  new  social  order  ever  came,  it  would 
come  by  gathering  to  itself  all  the  pathetic  human 
endeavor  which  had  Indicated  the  forward  direc- 
tion. But  I  was  mostv  eager  to  know  whether 
Tolstoy's  undertaking  to  do  his  daily  share  of  the 
physical  labor  of  the  world,  that  labor  which  is 
''so  disproportionate  to  the  unnourished  strength" 
of  those  by  whom  it  is  ordinarily  performed,  had 
brought  him  peace  ! 

I  had  time  to  review  carefully  many  things  in 
my  mind  during  the  long  days  of  convalescence  fol- 
lowing an  illness  of  typhoid  fever  which  I  suffered  in 
the  autumn  of  1895.     The  illness  was  so  prolonged 


262     TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

that  my  health  was  most  unsatisfactory  during  the 
following  winter,  and  the  next  May  I  went  abroad 
with  my  friend,  Miss  Smith,  to  effect  if  possible  a 
more  complete  recovery. 

The  prospect  of  seeing  Tolstoy  filled  me  with  the 
hope  of  finding  a  clew  to  the  tangled  affairs  of  city 
poverty.  I  was  but  one  of  thousands  of  our  con- 
temporaries who  were  turning  towards  this  Russian, 
not  as  to  a  seer  —  his  message  is  much  too  con- 
fused and  contradictory  for  that  —  but  as  to  a  man 
who  has  had  the  ability  to  lift  his  life  to  the  level 
of  his  conscience,  to  translate  his  theories  into 
action. 

Our  first  few  weeks  in  England  were  most  stimu- 
lating. A  dozen  years  ago  London  still  showed 
traces  of  "that  exciting  moment  in  the  life  of  the 
nation  when  its  youth  is  casting  about  for  new  en- 
thusiasms," but  it  evinced  still  more  of  that  British 
capacity  to  perform  the  hard  work  of  careful  re- 
search and  self-examination  which  must  precede 
any  successful  experiments  in  social  reform.  Of 
the  varied  groups  and  individuals  whose  sugges- 
tions remained  with  me  for  years,  I  recall  perhaps 
as  foremost  those  members  of  the  new  London 
County  Council  whose  far-reaching  plans  for  the 
betterment  of  London  could  not  but  enkindle 
enthusiasm.  It  was  a  most  striking  expression 
of  that  effort  which  would  place  beside  the  re- 
finement and  pleasure  of  the  rich,  a  new  refine- 
ment and  a  new  pleasure  born  of  the  commonwealth 


TOLSTOYISM  263 

and  the  common  joy  of  all  the  citizens,  that  at  this 
moment  they  prized  the  municipal  pleasure  boats 
upon  the  Thames  no  less  than  the  extensive  schemes 
for  the  municipal  housing  of  the  poorest  people. 
Ben  Tillet,  who  was  then  an  alderman,  ''the  docker 
sitting  beside  the  duke,"  took  me  in  a  rowboat 
down  the  Thames  on  a  journey  made  exciting 
by  the  hundreds  of  dockers  who  cheered  him  as  we 
passed  one  wharf  after  another  on  our  way  to  his 
home  at  Greenwich ;  John  Burns  showed  us  his 
wonderful  civic  accomplishments  at  Battersea,  the 
plant  turning  street  sweepings  into  cement  pave- 
micnts,  the  technical  school  teaching  boys  brick 
laying  and  plumbing,  and  the  public  bath  in  which 
the  children  of  the  Board  School  were  receiving  a 
swimming  lesson,  - —  these  measures  anticipating 
our  achievements  in  Chicago  by  at  least  a  decade 
and  a  half.  The  new  Education  Bill  which  was 
destined  to  drag  on  for  twelve  years  before  it 
developed  into  the  children's  charter,  was  then 
a  storm  center  in  the  House  of  Commons.  Miss 
Smith  and  I  were  much  pleased  to  be  taken 
to  tea  on  the  Parliament  terrace  by  its  author. 
Sir  John  Gorst,  although  we  were  quite  bewil- 
dered by  the  arguments  we  heard  there  for  church 
schools  versus  secular. 

We  heard  Keir  Hardie  before  a  large  audience 
of  workingmen  standing  in  the  open  square  of 
Canning  Town,  outline  the  great  things  to  be  ac- 
complished by  the  then  new  Labor  Party,  and  we 


264    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

joined  the  vast  body  of  men  in  the  booming  hymn 

When  wilt  Thou  save  the  people, 
O  God  of  Mercy,  when  ! 

finding  it  hard  to  realize  that  we  were  attending  a 
poHtical  meeting.  It  seemed  that  moment  as  if  the 
hopes  of  democracy  were  more  likely  to  come  to 
pass  on  English  soil  than  upon  our  own.  Robert 
Blatchford's  stirring  pamphlets  were  in  every  one's 
hands,  and  a  reception  given  by  Karl  Marx's  daugh- 
ter, Mrs.  Aveling,  to  Liebknecht  before  he  returned 
to  Germany  to  serve  a  prison  term  for  his  lese 
majeste  speech  in  the  Reichstag,  gave  us  a  glimpse 
of  the  old-fashioned  orthodox  Socialist  who  had  not 
yet  begun  to  yield  to  the  biting  ridicule  of  Bernard 
Shaw  although  he  flamed  in  their  midst  that  even- 
ing. 

Octavia  Hill,  kindly  demonstrated  to  us  the  prin- 
ciples upon  which  her  well-founded  business  of  rent 
collecting  was  established,  and  with  pardonable 
pride  showed  us  the  Red  Cross  Square  with  its  cot- 
tages marvelously  picturesque  and  comfortable,  on 
two  sides,  and  on  the  third  a  public  hall  and  com- 
mon drawing-room  for  the  use  of  all  the  tenants ; 
the  interior  of  the  latter  had  been  decorated  by 
pupils  of  Walter  Crane  with  mural  frescoes  por- 
traying the  heroism  in  the  life  of  the  modern  work- 
ingman. 

While  all  this  was  warmly  human,  we  also  had 
opportunities  to  see  something  of  a  group  of  men 


TOLSTOYISM  265 

and  women  who  were  approaching  the  social  prob- 
lem from  the  study  of  economics  ;  among  others 
Mr.  and  Mrs.  Sidney  Webb  who  were  at  work  on 
their  Industrial  Democracy ;  Mr.  John  Hobson 
who  was  lecturing  on  the  evolution  of  modern 
capitalism. 

We  followed  factory  inspectors  on  a  round  of 
duties  performed  with  a  thoroughness  and  a  trained 
intelligence  which  were  a  revelation  of  the  possi- 
bilities of  public  service.  When  it  came  to  visiting 
Settlements,  we  were  at  least  reassured  that  they 
were  not  falling  into  identical  lines  of  eifort. 
Canon  Ingram,  who  has  since  become  Bishop  of 
London,  was  then  warden  of  Oxford  House  and  in 
the  midst  of  an  experiment  which  pleased  me 
greatly,  the  more  because  it  was  carried  on  by  a 
churchman.  Oxford  House  had  hired  all  the  con- 
cert halls  —  vaudeville  shows  we  later  called  them 
in  Chicago  —  which  were  found  in  Bethnal  Green, 
for  every  Saturday  night.  The  residents  had  cen- 
sored the  programs,  which  they  were  careful  to  keep 
popular,  and  any  workingman  who  attended  a 
show  in  Bethnal  Green  on  a  Saturday  night,  and 
thousands  of  them  did,  heard  a  program  the  better 
for  this  effort. 

One  evening  in  University  Hall  Mrs.  Humphry 
Ward  who  had  just  returned  from  Italy,  described 
the  effect  of  the  Italian  salt  tax  in  a  talk  which  was 
evidently  one  in  a  series  of  lectures  upon  the  eco- 
nomic wrongs  which  pressed  heaviest  upon  the  poor ; 


266    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

at  Browning  House,  at  the  moment,  they  were 
giving  prizes  to  those  of  their  costermonger  neigh- 
bors who  could  present  the  best  cared-for  donkeys, 
and  the  warden,  Herbert  Stead,  exhibited  almost  the 
enthusiasm  of  his  well-known  brother,  for  that  crop 
of  kindliness  which  can  be  garnered  most  easily  from 
the  acreage  where  human  beings  grow  the  thickest ; 
at  the  Bermondsey  Settlement  they  were  rejoicing 
that  their  University  Extension  students  had  suc- 
cessfully passed  the  examinations  for  the  University 
of  London.  The  entire  impression  received  in  Eng- 
land of  research,  of  scholarship,  of  organized  public 
spirit,  was  in  marked  contrast  to  the  impressions  of 
my  next  visit  in  1900,  when  the  South  African  War 
had  absorbed  the  enthusiasm  of  the  nation  and 
the  wrongs  at ''  the  heart  of  the  empire  "  were  dis- 
regarded and  neglected. 

London,  of  course,  presented  sharp  differences 
to  Russia  where  social  conditions  were  written  in 
black  and  white  with  little  shading,  like  a  demon- 
stration of  the  Chinese  proverb,  "  Where  one  man 
lives  in  luxury,  another  is  dying  of  hunger." 

The  fair  of  Nijni-Novgorod  seemed  to  take  us  to 
the  very  edge  of  a  civilization  so  remote  and  eastern, 
that  the  merchants  brought  their  curious  goods 
upon  the  backs  of  camels  or  on  strange  craft  riding 
at  anchor  on  the  broad  Volga.  But  even  here  our 
letter  of  introduction  to  Korolenko,  the  novelist, 
brought  us  to  a  realization  of  that  strange  mingling 
of  a  remote  past  and  a  self-conscious  present  which 


TOLSTOYISM  267 

Russia  presents  on  every  hand.  This  same  con- 
trast was  also  shown  by  the  pilgrims  trudging  on 
pious  errands  to  monasteries,  to  tombs  and  to  the 
Holy  Land  itself,  with  their  bleeding  feet  bound  in 
rags  and  thrust  into  bast  sandals,  and,  on  the  other 
hand,  by  the  revolutionists  even  then  advocating  a 
Republic  which  should  obtain  not  only  in  political 
but  also  in  industrial   affairs. 

We  had  letters  of  introduction  to  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Aylmer  Maude  of  Moscow,  since  well  known  as  the 
translators  of  "Resurrection"  and  other  of  Tol- 
stoy's later  works,  who  at  that  moment  were  on  the 
eve  of  leaving  Russia  in  order  to  form  an  agricul- 
tural colony  in  South  England  where  they  might 
support  themselves  by  the  labor  of  their  hands. 
We  gladly  accepted  Mr.  Maude's  offer  to  take  us 
to  Yasnaya  Polyana  and  to  introduce  us  to  Count 
Tolstoy,  and  never  did  a  disciple  journey  towards 
his  master  with  more  enthusiasm  than  did  our  guide. 
When,  however,  Mr.  Maude  actually  presented  Miss 
Smith  and  myself  to  Count  Tolstoy,  knowing  well 
his  master's  attitude  toward  philanthropy,  he  en- 
deavored to  make  Hull-House  appear  much  more 
noble  and  unique  than  I  should  have  ventured 
to  do. 

Tolstoy  standing  by  clad  in  his  peasant  garb, 
listened  gravely  but,  glancing  distrustfully  at  the 
sleeves  of  my  traveling  gown  which  unfortunately 
at  that  season  were  monstrous  in  size,  he  took  hold 
of  an  edge  and  pulling  out  one  sleeve  to  an  intermin- 


268    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

able  breadth,  said  quite  simply  that  "there  was 
enough  stuff  on  one  arm  to  make  a  frock  for  a  little 
girl,"  and  asked  me  directly  if  I  did  not  find  ''such 
a  dress"  a  "barrier  to  the  people."  I  was  too  dis- 
concerted to  make  a  very  clear  explanation,  although 
I  tried  to  say  that  monstrous  as  my  sleeves  were 
they  did  not  compare  in  size  with  those  of  the  work- 
ing girls  in  Chicago  and  that  nothing  would  more 
effectively  separate  me  from  "the  people"  than  a 
cotton  blouse  following  the  simple  lines  of  the 
human  form ;  even  if  I  had  wished  to  imitate  him 
and  "dress  as  a  peasant,"  it  would  have  been  hard 
to  choose  which  peasant  among  the  thirty-six  na- 
tionalities we  had  recently  counted  in  our  ward. 
Fortunately  the  countess  came  to  my  rescue  with 
a  recital  of  her  former  attempts  to  clothe  hypotheti- 
cal little  girls  in  yards  of  material  cut  from  a  train 
and  other  superfluous  parts  of  her  best  gown  until 
she  had  been  driven  to  a  firm  stand  which  she  ad- 
vised me  to  take  at  once.  But  neither  Countess 
Tolstoy  nor  any  other  friend  was  on  hand  to  help 
me  out  of  my  predicament  later,  when  I  was  asked 
who  "fed"  me,  and  how  did  I  obtain  "shelter"  ? 
Upon  my  reply  that  a  farm  a  hundred  miles  from 
Chicago  supplied  me  with  the  necessities  of  life,  I 
fairly  anticipated  the  next  scathing  question  :  "  So 
you  are  an  absentee  landlord  ?  Do  you  think  you 
will  help  the  people  more  by  adding  yourself  to  the 
crowded  city  than  you  would  by  tilling  your  own 
soil  .^"     This  new  sense  of  discomfort  over  a  failure 


TOLSTOYISM  269 

to  till  my  own  soil  was  increased  when  Tolstoy's 
second  daughter  appeared  at  the  five-o'clock  tea 
table  set  under  the  trees,  coming  straight  from  the 
harvest  field  where  she  had  been  working  with  a 
group  of  peasants  since  five  o'clock  in  the  morning, 
not  pretending  to  work  but  really  taking  the  place 
of  a  peasant  woman  who  had  hurt  her  foot.  She 
was  plainly  much  exhausted  but  neither  expected 
nor  received  sympathy  from  the  members  of  a 
family  who  were  quite  accustomed  to  see  each  other 
carry  out  their  convictions  in  spite  of  discomfort 
and  fatigue.  The  martyrdom  of  discomfort,  how- 
ever, was  obviously  much  easier  to  bear  than  that 
to  which,  even  to  the  eyes  of  the  casual  visitor, 
Count  Tolstoy  daily  subjected  himself,  for  his  study 
in  the  basement  of  the  conventional  dwelling,  with 
its  short  shelf  of  battered  books  and  its  scythe 
and  spade  leaning  against  the  wall,  had  many  times 
lent  itself  to  that  ridicule  which  is  the  most  difficult 
form  of  martyrdom. 

That  summer  evening  as  we  sat  in  the  garden 
with  a  group  of  visitors  from  Germany,  from  Eng- 
land and  America,  who  had  traveled  to  the  remote 
Russian  village  that  they  might  learn  of  this  man, 
one  could  not  forbear  the  constant  inquiry  to  one's 
self,  as  to  why  he  was  so  regarded  as  sage  and  saint 
that  this  party  of  people  should  be  repeated  each 
day  of  the  year.  It  seemed  to  me  then  that  we 
were  all  attracted  by  this  sermon  of  the  deed, 
because  Tolstoy  had  made  the  one  supreme  per- 


270    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE    ' 

sonal  effort,  one  might  almost  say  the  one  frantic 
personal  effort,  to  put  himself  into  right  relations 
with  the  humblest  people,  with  the  men  who 
tilled  his  soil,  blacked  his  boots  and  cleaned  his 
stables.  Doubtless  the  heaviest  burden  of  our 
contemporaries  is  a  consciousness  of  a  divergence 
between  our  democratic  theory  on  the  one  hand, 
that  working  people  have  a  right  to  the  intellectual 
resources  of  society,  and  the  actual  fact  on  the 
other  hand,  that  thousands  of  them  are  so  over- 
burdened with  toil  that  there  is  no  leisure  nor  en- 
ergy left  for  the  cultivation  of  the  mind.  We 
constantly  suffer  from  the  strain  and  indecision  of 
believing  this  theory  and  acting  as  if  we  did  not 
believe  it,  and  this  man  who  years  before  had 
tried  "to  get  off  the  backs  of  the  peasants,"  who 
had  at  least  simplified  his  life  and  worked  with  his 
hands,  had  come  to  be  a  prototype  to  many  of  his 
generation. 

Doubtless  all  of  the  visitors  sitting  in  the  Tolstoy 
garden  that  evening  had  excused  themselves  from 
laboring  with  their  hands  upon  the  theory  that 
they  were  doing  something  more  valuable  for 
society  in  other  ways.  No  one  among  our  con- 
temporaries has  dissented  from  this  point  of  view 
so  violently  as  Tolstoy  himself,  and  yet  no  man 
might  so  easily  have  excused  himself  from  hard 
and  rough  work  on  the  basis  of  his  genius  and  of  his 
intellectual  contributions  to  the  world.  So  far, 
however,  from  considering  his   time  too  valuable 


TOLSTOYISM 


271 


to  be  spent  in  labor  in  the  field  or  in  making  shoes, 
our  great  host  was  too  eager  to  know  life  to  be 
willing  to  give  up  this  companionship  of  mutual 
labor.  One  instinctively  found  reasons  why  it 
was  easier  for  a  Russian  than  for  the  rest  of  us,  to 
reach  this  conclusion ;  the  Russian  peasants  have 
a  proverb  which  says:  "Labor  is  the  house  that 
love  lives  in,"  by  which  they  mean  that  no  two 


I,  ,/ 


'mm 


I        " 


^^iv„^'^;/v 


^ L 


people  nor  group  of  people,  can  come  into  affec- 
tionate relations  with  each  other  unless  they  carry 
on  together  a  mutual  task,  and  when  the  Russian 
peasant  talks  of  labor  he  means  labor  on  the  soil,  or, 
to  use  the  phrase  of  the  great  peasant,  Bondereff, 
''bread  labor."  Those  monastic  orders  founded 
upon  agricultural  labor,  those  philosophical  experi- 
ments like  Brook  Farm  and  many  another,  have 
attempted  to  reduce  to  action  this  same  truth.  Tol- 
stoy himself  has  written  many  times  his  own  con- 


272    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

victions  and  attempts  in  this  direction,  perhaps 
never  more  telHngly  than  in  the  description  of 
Lavin's  morning  spent  in  the  harvest  field,  when 
he  lost  his  sense  of  grievance  and  isolation  and  felt 
a  strange  new  brotherhood  for  the  peasants,  in 
proportion  as  the  rhythmic  motion  of  his  scythe 
became  one   with   theirs. 

At  the  long  dinner  table  laid  in  the  garden  were 
the  various  traveling  guests,  the  grown-up  daugh- 
ters, and  the  younger  children  with  their  governess. 
The  countess  presided  over  the  usual  European 
dinner  served  by  men,  but  the  count  and  the 
daughter  who  had  worked  all  day  in  the  fields, 
ate  only  porridge  and  black  bread  and  drank  only 
kvas,  the  fare  of  the  hay-making  peasants.  Of 
course  we  are  all  accustomed  to  the  fact  that  those 
who  perform  the  heaviest  labor,  eat  the  coarsest  and 
simplest  fare  at  the  end  of  the  day,  but  it  is  not 
often  that  we  sit  at  the  same  table  with  them  while 
we  ourselves  eat  the  more  elaborate  food  prepared 
by  some  one  else's  labor.  Tolstoy  ate  his  simple 
supper  without  remark  or  comment  upon  the  food 
his  family  and  guests  preferred  to  eat,  assuming 
that  they,  as  well  as  he,  had  settled  the  matter  with 
their  own  consciences. 

The  Tolstoy  household  that  evening  was  much 
interested  in  the  fate  of  a  young  Russian  spy  who 
had  recently  come  to  Tolstoy  in  the  guise  of  a 
country  schoolmaster,  in  order  to  obtain  a  copy  of 
''Life,"  which  had  been  interdicted  by  the  censor 


TOLSTOYISM  273 

of  the  press.  After  spending  the  night  In  talk 
with  Tolstoy,  the  spy  had  gone  away  with  a  copy 
of  the  forbidden  manuscript  but,  unfortunately  for 
himself,  having  become  converted  to  Tolstoy's 
views  he  had  later  made  a  full  confession  to  the 
authorities  and  had  been  exiled  to  Siberia.  Tol- 
stoy holding  that  it  was  most  unjust  to  exile  the 
disciple  while  he,  the  author  of  the  book,  remained 
at  large,  had  pointed  out  this  inconsistency  in  an 
open  letter  to  one  of  the  Moscow  newspapers.  The 
discussion  of  this  incident,  of  course,  opened  up  the 
entire  subject  of  non-resistance,  and  curiously 
enough  I  was  disappointed  in  Tolstoy's  position  in 
the  matter.  It  seemed  to  me  that  he  made  too 
great  a  distinction  between  the  use  of  physical 
force  and  that  moral  energy  which  can  override 
another's  differences  and  scruples  with  equal  ruth- 
lessness. 

With  that  inner  sense  of  mortification  with  which 
one  finds  one's  self  at  difference  with  the  great 
authority,  I  recalled  the  conviction  of  the  early 
Hull-House  residents  ;  that  whatever  of  good  the 
Settlement  had  to  offer  should  be  put  Into  positive 
terms,  that  we  might  live  with  opposition  to  no 
man,  with  recognition  of  the  good  in  every  man, 
even  the  most  wretched.  We  had  often  departed 
from  this  principle,  but  had  It  not  In  every  case 
been  a  confession  of  weakness,  and  had  we  not 
always  found  antagonism  a  foolish  and  unwarrant- 
able expenditure  of  energy  ? 


274    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

The  conversation  at  dinner  and  afterwards, 
although  conducted  with  animation  and  sincerity, 
for  the  moment  stirred  vague  misgivings  within 
me.  Was  Tolstoy  more  logical  than  life  warrants  ? 
Could  the  wrongs  of  life  be  reduced  to  the  terms  of 
unrequited  labor  and  all  be  made  right  if  each  per- 
son performed  the  amount  necessary  to  satisfy 
his  own  wants  ?  Was  it  not  always  easy  to  put  up 
a  strong  case  if  one  took  the  naturalistic  view  of 
life  ?  But  what  about  the  historic  view,  the  inevi- 
table shadings  and  modifications  which  life  itself 
brings  to  its  own  interpretation  ?  Miss  Smith  and 
I  took  a  night  train  back  to  Moscow  in  that  tumult 
of  feeling  which  is  always  produced  by  contact  with 
a  conscience  making  one  more  of  those  determined 
efforts  to  probe  to  the  very  foundations  of  the 
mysterious  world  in  which  we  find  ourselves.  A 
horde  of  perplexing  questions,  concerning  those 
problems  of  existence  of  which  in  happier  mo- 
ments we  catch  but  fleeting  glimpses  and  at 
which  we  even  then  stand  aghast,  pursued  us 
relentlessly  on  the  long  journey  through  the  great 
wheat  plains  of  South  Russia,  through  the  crowded 
Ghetto  of  Warsaw,  and  finally  into  the  smiling 
fields  of  Germany  where  the  peasant  men  and 
women  were  harvesting  the  grain.  I  remember 
that  through  the  sight  of  those  toiling  peasants,  I 
made  a  curious  connection  between  the  bread 
labor  advocated  by  Tolstoy  and  the  comfort  the 
harvest  fields   are   said   to  have  once  brought  to 


TOLSTOYISM 


275 


Luther  when,  much  perturbed  by  many  theologi- 
cal difficulties,  he  suddenly  forgot  them  all  in  a 
gush  of  gratitude  for  mere  bread,  exclaiming, 
''How  it  stands,  that  golden  yellow  corn,  on  its 
fine  tapered  stem ;  the  meek  earth,  at  God's  kind 
bidding,  has  produced  it 
once  again  ! "  At  least 
the  toiling  poor  had  this 
comfort  of  bread  labor, 
and  perhaps  it  did  not 
matter  that  they  gained 
it  unknowingly  and  pain- 
fully, if  only  they  walked 
in  the  path  of  labor.  In 
the  exercise  of  that  curi- 
ous power  possessed  by 
the  theorists  to  inhibit  all 
experiences  which  do  not 
enhance    his    doctrine,   I 

did  not  permit  myself  to  recall  that  which  I  knew 
so  well, — that  exigent  and  unremitting  labor  grants 
the  poor  no  leisure  even  in  the  supreme  moments 
of  human  suffering  and  that  "all  griefs  are  lighter 
with  bread." 

I  may  have  wished  to  secure  this  solace  for  my- 
self at  the  cost  of  the  least  possible  expenditure  of 
time  and  energy,  for  during  the  next  month  In 
Germany,  when  I  read  everything  of  Tolstoy's 
that  had  been  translated  into  English,  German,  or 
French,  there  grew  up  In  my  mind  a  conviction 


276    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

that  what  I  ought  to  do  upon  my  return  to  Hull- 
House,  was  to  spend  at  least  two  hours  every  morn- 
ing in  the  little  bakery  which  we  had  recently 
added  to  the  equipment  of  our  coffee-house.  Two 
hours'  work  would  be  but  a  wretched  compromise, 
but  it  was  hard  to  see  how  I  could  take  more  time 
out  of  each  day.  I  had  been  taught  to  bake  bread 
in  my  childhood  not  only  as  a  household  accom- 
plishment, but  because  my  father,  true  to  his  miller's 
tradition,  had  insisted  that  each  one  of  his  daughters 
on  her  twelfth  birthday  must  present  him  with  a 
satisfactory  wheat  loaf  of  her  own  baking,  and  he 
was  most  exigent  as  to  the  quality  of  this  test  loaf. 
What  could  be  more  in  keeping  with  my  training 
and  tradition  than  baking  bread  ?  I  did  not  quite 
see  how  my  activity  would  fit  in  with  that  of  the 
German  union  baker  who  presided  over  the  Hull- 
House  bakery  but  all  such  matters  were  secondary 
and  certainly  could  be  arranged.  It  may  be  that 
I  had  thus  to  pacify  my  aroused  conscience  before 
I  could  settle  down  to  hear  Wagner's  ''Ring"  at 
Beyreuth ;  it  may  be  that  I  had  fallen  a  victim,  to 
the  phrase,  "bread  labor"  ;  but  at  any  rate  I  held 
fast  to  the  belief  that  I  should  do  this,  through  the 
entire  journey  homeward,  on  land  and  sea,  until  I 
actually  arrived  in  Chicago  when  suddenly  the 
whole  scheme  seemed  to  me  as  utterly  preposter- 
ous as  it  doubtless  was.  The  half  dozen  people 
invariably  waiting  to  see  me  after  breakfast,  the 
piles  of  letters  to  be  opened   and   answered,   the 


TOLSTOYISM  277 

demand  of  actual  and  pressing  human  wants,  — 
were  these  all  to  be  pushed  aside  and  asked  to 
wait  while  I  saved  my  soul  by  two  hours'  work  at 
baking  bread  ? 

Although  my  resolution  was  abandoned,  this 
may  be  the  best  place  to  record  the  efforts  of  more 
doughty  souls  to  carry  out  Tolstoy's  conclusions. 
It  was  perhaps  inevitable  that  Tolstoy  colonies 
should  be  founded,  although  Tolstoy  himself  has 
always  Insisted  that  each  man  should  live  his  life 
as  nearly  as  possible  In  the  place  in  which  he  was 
born.  The  visit  Miss  Smith  and  I  made  a  year  or 
two  later  to  a  colony  in  one  of  the  southern  States, 
portrayed  for  us  most  vividly  both  the  weakness 
and  the  strange  august  dignity  of  the  Tolstoy 
position.  The  colonists  at  Commonwealth  held 
but  a  short  creed.  They  claimed  in  fact  that  the 
difficulty  is  not  to  state  truth  but  to  make  moral 
conviction  operative  upon  actual  life,  and  they 
announced  it  their  Intention  ''to  obey  the  teach- 
ings of  Jesus  in  all  matters  of  labor  and  the  use  of 
property."  They  would  thus  transfer  the  vindi- 
cation of  creed  from  the  church  to  the  open  field, 
from  dogma  to  experience. 

The  day  Miss  Smith  and  I  visited  the  Com- 
monwealth colony  of  threescore  souls,  they  were 
erecting  a  house  for  the  family  of  a  one-legged 
man,  consisting  of  a  wife  and  nine  children  who 
had  come  the  week  before  In  a  forlorn  prairie 
schooner  from  Arkansas.     As  this  was  the  largest 


278     TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

family  the  little  colony  contained,  the  new  house 
was  to  be  the  largest  yet  erected.  Upon  our  sur- 
prise at  this  literal  giving  ''to  him  that  asketh," 
we  inquired  if  the  policy  of  extending  food  and 
shelter  to  all  who  applied,  without  test  of  creed  or 
ability,  might  not  result  in  the  migration  of  all 
the  neighboring  poorhouse  population  into  the 
colony.  We  were  told  that  this  actually  had 
happened  during  the  winter  until  the  colony  fare 
of  corn  meal  and  cow  peas  had  proved  so  unattrac- 
tive that  the  paupers  had  gone  back,  for  even  the 
poorest  of  the  southern  poorhouses  occasionally 
supplied  bacon  with  the  pone  if  only  to  prevent 
scurvy  from  which  the  colonists  themselves  had 
suifered.  The  difficulty  of  the  poorhouse  people 
had  thus  settled  itself  by  the  sheer  poverty  of  the 
situation,  a  poverty  so  biting  that  the  only  ones 
willing  to  face  it  were  those  sustained  by  a  convic- 
tion of  its  righteousness.  The  fields  and  gardens 
were  being  worked  by  an  editor,  a  professor,  a 
clergyman,  as  well  as  by  artisans  and  laborers,  the 
fruit  thereof  to  be  eaten  by  themselves  and  their 
families  or  by  any  other  families  who  might  arrive 
from  Arkansas.  The  colonists  were  very  conven- 
tional in  matters  of  family  relationship  and  had 
broken  with  society  only  in  regard  to  the  conven- 
tions pertaining  to  labor  and  property.  We  had  a 
curious  experience  at  the  end  of  the  day  when  we 
were  driven  into  the  nearest  town.  We  had  taken 
with  us  as  a  guest  the  wife  of  the  president  of  the 


TOLSTOYISM  279 

colony,  wishing  to  give  her  a  dinner  at  the  hotel,  be- 
cause she  had  girlishly  exclaimed  during  a  conver- 
sation that  at  times  during  the  winter  she  had  be- 
come so  eager  to  hear  good  music  that  it  had  seemed 
to  her  as  if  she  were  actually  hungry  for  it,  almost 
as  hungry  as  she  was  for  a  beefsteak.     Yet  as  we 
drove  away  we  had  the  curious  sensation  that  while 
the  experiment  was  obviously  coming  to  an  end,  m 
the  midst  of  its  privations  it  yet  embodied  the  peace 
of  mind  which  comes  to  him  who  insists  upon  the  ^ 
logic  of  life  whether  it  is  reasonable  or  not  —  the  fa- 
natic's joy  in  seeing  his  own  formula  translated  into 
action.     At  any  rate,  as  we  reached  the  common- 
place southern  town  of  workaday  men  and  women, 
for  one  moment  its  substantial  buildings,  its  solid 
brick   churches,    its   ordered   streets,    divided   into 
those  of  the  rich  and  those  of  the  poor,  seemed  much 
more  unreal  to  us  than  the  little  struggling  colony 
we  had  left  behind.    We  repeated  to  each  other  that 
in  all  the  practical  judgments  and  decisions  of  life, 
we   must  part   company  with  logical   demonstra- 
tion ;  that  if  we  stop  for  it  in  each  case,  we  can  never 
go  on  at  all ;    and  yet,  in  spite  of  this,  when  con- 
science does  become  the  dictator  of  the  daily  life 
of  a  group  of  men,  it  forces  our  admiration  as  no 
other    modern    spectacle    has    power    to    do.      It 
seemed  but  a  mere  incident  that  this  group  should 
have  lost  sight  of  the  facts  of  life  In  their  earnest 
endeavor  to  put  to  the  test  the  things  of  the  spirit. 
I  knew  little  about  the  colony  started  by  Mr. 


28o    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

Maude  at  Purleigh  containing  several  of  Tolstoy's 
followers  who  were  not  permitted  to  live  in  Russia, 
and  we  did  not  see  Mr.  Maude  again  until  he  came 
to  Chicago  on  his  way  from  Manitoba,  whither 
he  had  transported  the  second  group  of  Dukhobors, 
a  religious  sect  who  had  interested  all  of  Tolstoy's 
followers  because  of  their  literal  acceptance  of 
non-resistance  and  other  Christian  doctrines  which 
are  so  strenuously  advocated  by  Tolstoy.  It  was 
for  their  benefit  that  Tolstoy  had  finished  and 
published  "Resurrection,"  breaking  through  his 
long-kept  resolution  against  novel  writing.  After 
the  Dukhobors  were  settled  in  Canada,  of  the 
five  hundred  dollars  left  from  the  '^Resurrection" 
funds,  one  half  was  given  to  Hull-House.  It 
seemed  possible  to  spend  this  fund  only  for  the 
relief  of  the  most  primitive  wants  of  food  and 
shelter  on  the  part  of  the  most  needy  families. 


Polk  Street,  opposite  Hull-House. 


CHAPTER  XIII 
Public  Activities  and  Investigations 

One  of  the  striking  features  of  our  neighborhood 
twenty  years  ago,  and  one  to  which  we  never  be- 
came reconciled,  was  the  presence  of  huge  wooden 
garbage  boxes  fastened  to  the  street  pavement  in 
which  the  undisturbed  refuse  accumulated  day  by 
day.  The  system  of  garbage  collecting  was  in- 
adequate throughout  the  city  but  it  became  the 
greatest  menace  in  a  ward  such  as  ours,  where  the 
normal  amount  of  waste  was  much  increased  by 
the  decayed  fruit  and  vegetables  discarded  by  the 
Italian  and  Greek  fruit  peddlers,  and  by  the  re- 
siduum left  over  from  the  piles  of  filthy  rags  which 
were  fished  out  of  the  city  dumps  and  brought  to 
the  homes  of  the  rag  pickers  for  further  sorting 
and  washing. 

The  children  of  our  neighborhood  twenty  years 
ago  played  their  games  in  and  around  these  huge 
garbage  boxes.  They  were  the  first  objects  that 
the  toddling  child  learned  to  climb ;  their  bulk 
afforded  a  barricade  and  their  contents  provided 
missiles  in  all  the  battles  of  the  older  boys  ;  and 
finally  they  became  the  seats  upon  which  absorbed 
lovers  held  enchanted  converse.     We  are  obliged 

281 


282    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

to    remember    that    all    children    eat    everything 
which   they  find   and   that  odors   have   a   curious 


1  ■  p?    ■  \ 


7  :   I? 


rL_.  ML  ,.Jii|^'=^;ll 


^'X^mu,  -'    llW 


IHI^- 


(Ks,' 


-^ 


and  intimate  power  of  entwining  themselves  into 
our  tenderest  memories,  before  even  the  resident^ 


ACTIVITIES   AND   INVESTIGATIONS   283 

of  Hull-House  can  understand  their  own  early 
enthusiasm  for  the  removal  of  these  boxes  and  the 
establishment  of  a  better  system  of  refuse  collec- 
tion. 

It  is  easy  for  even  the  most  conscientious  citizen 
of  Chicago  to  forget  the  foul  smells  of  the  stock- 
yards and  the  garbage  dumps,  when  he  is  living  so 
far  from  them  that  he  is  only  occasionally  made 
conscious  of  their  existence  but  the  residents  of 
a  Settlement  are  perforce  constantly  surrounded 
by  them.  During  our  first  three  years  on  Halsted 
Street,  we  had  established  a  small  incinerator  at 
Hull-House  and  we  had  many  times  reported  the 
untoward  conditions  of  the  ward  to  the  city 
hall.  We  had  also  arranged  many  talks  for  the 
immigrants,  pointing  out  that  although  a  woman 
may  sweep  her  own  doorway  in  her  native  village 
and  allow  the  refuse  to  innocently  decay  in  the 
open  air  and  sunshine,  in  a  crowded  city  quarter, 
if  the  garbage  is  not  properly  collected  and  de- 
stroyed, a  tenement-house  mother  may  see  her 
children  sicken  and  die,  and  that  the  immigrants 
must  therefore,  not  only  keep  their  own  houses 
clean,  but  must  also  help  the  authorities  to  keep 
the  city  clean. 

Possibly  our  efforts  slightly  modified  the  worst 
conditions  but  they  still  remained  intolerable,  and 
the  fourth  summer  the  situation  became  for  me 
absolutely  desperate  when  I  realized  in  a  moment 
of  panic  that  my  delicate  little  nephew  for  whom 


284    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

I  was  guardian,  could  not  be  with  me  at  Hull- 
House  at  all  unless  the  sickening  odors  were  re- 
duced. I  may  well  be  ashamed  that  other  deli- 
cate children  who  were  torn  from  their  families, 
not  into  boarding  school  but  into  eternity,  had  not 
long  before  driven  me  to  effective  action.  Under 
the  direction  of  the  first  man  who  came  as  a  resi- 
dent to  Hull-House  we  began  a  systematic  investi- 
gation of  the  city  system  of  garbage  collection, 
both  as  to  its  efficiency  in  other  wards  and  its  pos- 
sible connection  with  the  death  rate  in  the  various 
wards  of  the  city. 

The  Hull-House  Woman's  Club  had  been  or- 
ganized the  year  before  by  the  resident  kinder- 
gartner  who  had  first  inaugurated  a  mothers' 
meeting.  The  members  came  together,  however, 
in  quite  a  new  way  that  summer  when  we  dis- 
cussed with  them  the  high  death  rate  so  persistent 
in  our  ward.  After  several  club  meetings  devoted 
to  the  subject,  despite  the  fact  that  the  death  rate 
rose  highest  in  the  congested  foreign  colonies  and 
not  in  the  streets  in  which  most  of  the  Irish  Ameri- 
can club  women  lived,  twelve  of  their  number 
undertook  in  connection  with  the  residents,  to 
carefully  investigate  the  condition  of  the  alleys. 
During  August  and  September  the  substantiated 
reports  of  violations  of  the  law  sent  In  from  Hull- 
House  to  the  health  department  were  one  thou- 
sand and  thirty-seven.  For  the  club  woman  who 
had  finished  a  long  day's  work  of  washing  or  ironing 


ACTIVITIES  AND   INVESTIGATIONS   285 

followed  by  the  cooking  of  a  hot  supper,  It  would 
have  been  much  easier  to  sit  on  her  doorstep 
during  a  summer  evening  than  to  go  up  and 
down  ill-kept  alleys  and  get  into  trouble  with  her 
neighbors  over  the  condition  of  their  garbage 
boxes.  It  required  both  civic  enterprise  and 
moral  conviction  to  be  willing  to  do  this  three 
evenings  a  week  during  the  hottest  and  most  un- 
comfortable months  of  the  year.  Nevertheless,  a 
certain  number  of  women  persisted,  as  did  the 
residents  and  three  city  inspectors  in  succession 
were  transferred  from  the  ward  because  of  un- 
satisfactory services.  Still  the  death  rate  re- 
mained high  and  the  condition  seemed  little  im- 
proved throughout  the  next  winter.  In  sheer 
desperation,  the  following  spring  when  the  city 
contracts  were  awarded  for  the  removal  of  gar- 
bage, with  the  backing  of  two  well-known  business 
men,  I  put  in  a  bid  for  the  garbage  removal  of  the 
nineteenth  ward.  My  paper  was  thrown  out  on  a 
technicality  but  the  incident  induced  the  mayor 
to  appoint  me  the  garbage  inspector  of  the  ward. 

The  salary  was  a  thousand  dollars  a  year,  and 
the  loss  of  that  political  ''plum"  made  a  great 
stir  among  the  politicians.  The  position  was  no 
sinecure  whether  regarded  from  the  point  of  view 
of  getting  up  at  six  in  the  morning  to  see  that 
the  men  were  early  at  work ;  or  of  following  the 
loaded  wagons,  uneasily  dropping  their  contents 
at   intervals,   to   their   dreary  destination    at   the 


286    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

dump ;  or  of  insisting  that  the  contractor  must  in- 
crease the  number  of  his  wagons  from  nine  to 
thirteen  and  from  thirteen  to  seventeen,  although 
he  assured  me  that  he  lost  money  on  every  one 
and  that  the  former  inspector  had  let  him  off  with 
seven ;  or  of  taking  careless  landlords  into  court 
because  they  would  not  provide  the  proper  garbage 
receptacles  ;  or  of  arresting  the  tenant  who  tried  to 
make  the  garbage  wagons  carry  away  the  contents 
of  his  stable. 

With  the  two  or  three  residents  who  nobly 
stood  by,  we  set  up  six  of  those  doleful  incinerators 
which  are  supposed  to  burn  garbage  with  the  fuel 
collected  in  the  alley  itself.  The  one  factory  in 
town  which  could  utilize  old  tin  cans  was  a  window 
weight  factory,  and  we  deluged  that  with  ten  times 
as  many  tin  cans  as  it  could  use  —  much  less  would 
pay  for.  We  made  desperate  attempts  to  have 
the  dead  animals  removed  by  the  contractor  who 
was  paid  most  liberally  by  the  city  for  that  pur- 
pose but  who,  we  slowly  discovered,  always  made 
the  police  ambulances  do  the  work,  delivering  the 
carcasses  upon  freight  cars  for  shipment  to  a  soap 
factory  in  Indiana  where  they  were  sold  for  a 
good  price  although  the  contractor  himself  was 
the  largest  stockholder  in  the  concern.  Perhaps 
our  greatest  achievement  was  the  discovery  of  a 
pavement  eighteen  inches  under  the  surface  in  a 
narrow  street,  although  after  it  was  found  we  tri- 
umphantly discovered  a  record  of  its  existence  in 


ACTIVITIES  AND   INVESTIGATIONS   287 

the  city  archives.  The  Italians  living  on  the  street 
were  much  interested  but  displayed  little  astonish- 
ment, perhaps  because  they  were  accustomed  to 
see  buried  cities  exhumed.  This  pavement  became 
the  casus  belli  between  myself  and  the  street  com- 
missioner when  I  insisted  that  its  restoration  be- 
longed to  him,  after  I  had  removed  the  first  eight 
inches  of  garbage.  The  matter  was  finally  settled 
by  the  mayor  himself,  who  permitted  me  to  drive 
him  to  the  entrance  of  the  street  in  what  the  chil- 
dren called  my  ''garbage  phaeton"  and  who  took 
my  side  of  the  controversy. 

A  graduate  of  the  University  of  Wisconsin, 
who  had  done  some  excellent  volunteer  inspection 
in  both  Chicago  and  Pittsburg,  became  my  deputy 
and  performed  the  work  in  a  most  thoroughgoing 
manner  for  three  years.  During  the  last  two  she 
was  under  the  regime  of  civil  service  for  in  1895, 
to  the  great  joy  of  many  citizens,  the  Illinois  leg- 
islature made  that  possible. 

Many  of  the  foreign-born  women  of  the  ward 
were  much  shocked  by  this  abrupt  departure  into 
the  ways  of  men,  and  it  took  a  great  deal  of  ex- 
planation to  convey  the  idea  even  remotely  that 
if  it  were  a  womanly  task  to  go  about  in  tenement 
houses  in  order  to  nurse  the  sick,  it  might  be 
quite  as  womanly  to  go  through  the  same  di^strict 
in  order  to  prevent  the  breeding  of  so-called  ''filth 
diseases."  While  some  of  the  women  enthu- 
siastically approved    the    slowly  changing  condi- 


288     TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

tions  and  saw  that  their  housewifely  duties  logically 
extended  to  the  adjacent  alleys  and  streets,  they 
yet  were  quite  certain  that  ''it  was  not  a  lady's 
job."  A  revelation  of  this  attitude  was  made  one 
day  in  a  conversation  which  the  inspector  heard 
vigorously  carried  on  in  a  laundry.  One  of  the 
employees  was  leaving  and  was  expressing  her 
mind  concerning  the  place  in  no  measured  terms, 
summing  up  her  contempt  for  it  as  follows:  ''I 
would  rather  be  the  girl  who  goes  about  in  the 
alleys  than  to  stay  here  any  longer!" 

And  yet  the  spectacle  of  eight  hours'  work  for 
eight  hours'  pay,  the  even-handed  justice  to  all 
citizens  irrespective  of  "pull,"  the  dividing  of 
responsibility  between  landlord  and  tenant,  and 
the  readiness  to  enforce  obedience  to  law  from 
both,  was,  perhaps,  one  of  the  most  valuable  dem- 
onstrations which  could  have  been  made.  Such 
daily  living  on  the  part  of  the  office  holder  is  of 
infinitely  more  value  than  many  talks  on  civics 
for,  after  all,  we  credit  most  easily  that  which  we 
see.  The  careful  inspection  combined  with  other 
causes,  brought  about  a  great  improvement  in  the 
cleanliness  and  comfort  of  the  neighborhood  and 
one  happy  day,  when  the  death  rate  of  our  ward 
was  found  to  have  dropped  from  third  to  seventh 
in  the  list  of  city  wards  and  was  so  reported  to  our 
Woman's  Club,  the  applause  which  followed  re- 
corded the  genuine  sense  of  participation  in  the 
result,  and  a  public  spirit  which  had  ''made  good." 


ACTIVITIES  AND   INVESTIGATIONS    289 

But  the  cleanliness  of  the  ward  was  becoming 
much  too  popular  to  suit  our  all-powerful  alder- 
man and,  although  we  felt  fatuously  secure  under 
the  regime  of  civil  service,  he  found  a  way  to  cir- 
cumvent us  by  eliminating  the  position  altogether. 
He  introduced  an  ordinance  into  the  city  council 
which  combined  the  collection  of  refuse  with  the 
cleaning  and  repairing  of  the  streets,  the  whole  to 
be  placed  under  a  ward  superintendent.  The 
office  of  course  was  to  be  filled  under  civil  service 
regulations  but  only  men  were  eligible  to  the 
examination.  Although  this  latter  regulation  was 
afterwards  modified  in  favor  of  one  woman,  it  was 
retained  long  enough  to  put  the  nineteenth  ward 
inspector  out  of  office. 

Of  course  our  experience  in  inspecting  only 
made  us  more  conscious  of  the  wretched  housing 
conditions  over  which  we  had  been  distressed  from 
the  first.  It  was  during  the  World's  Fair  summer 
that  one  of  the  Hull-House  residents  in  a  public 
address  upon  housing  reform  used  as  an  example 
of  indifferent  landlordism  a  large  block  in  the 
neighborhood  occupied  by  small  tenements  and 
stables  unconnected  with  a  street  sewer,  as  was 
much  similar  property  in  the  vicinity.  In  the 
lecture  the  resident  spared  neither  a  description  of 
the  property  nor  the  name  of  the  owner.  The 
young  man  who  owned  the  property  was  justly 
indignant  at  this  public  method  of  attack  and 
promptly  came  to  investigate  the  condition  of  the 


290    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

property.  Together  we  made  a  careful  tour  of 
the  houses  and  stables  and  in  the  face  of  the  con- 
ditions that  we  found  there,  I  could  not  but  agree 
with  him  that  supplying  South  Italian  peasants 
with  sanitary  appliances  seemed  a  difficult  under- 
taking. Nevertheless  he  was  unwilling  that  the 
block  should  remain  in  its  deplorable  state,  and 
he  finally  cut  through  the  dilemma  with  the  rash 
proposition  that  he  would  give  a  free  lease  of  the 
entire  tract  to  Hull-House,  accompanying  the  offer, 
however,  with  the  warning  remark,  that  if  we 
should  choose  to  use  the  income  from  the  rents 
in  sanitary  improvements  we  should  be  throwing 
our  money  away. 

Even  when  we  decided  that  the  houses  were  so 
bad  that  we  could  not  undertake  the  task  of  im- 
proving them,  he  was  game  and  stuck  to  his  propo- 
sition that  we  should  have  a  free  lease.  We  finally 
submitted  a  plan  that  the  houses  should  be  torn 
down  and  the  entire  tract  turned  into  a  play- 
ground, although  cautious  advisers  intimated  that 
it  would  be  very  inconsistent  to  ask  for  sub- 
scriptions for  the  support  of  Hull-House  when  we 
were  known  to  have  thrown  away  an  income  of  two 
thousand  dollars  a  year.  We,  however,  felt  that 
a  spectacle  of  inconsistency  was  better  than  one 
of  bad  landlordism  and  so  the  worst  of  the 
houses  were  demolished,  the  best  three  were  sold 
and  moved  across  the  street  under  careful  pro- 
vision that  they  might  never  be  used  for  junk- 


ACTIVITIES  AND   INVESTIGATIONS   291 

shops  or  saloons,  and  a  public  playground  was 
finally  established.  Hull-House  became  respon- 
sible for  its  management  for  ten  years,  at  the  end 
of  which  time  it  was  turned  over  to  the  City 
Playground  Commission  although  from  the  first 
the  city  detailed  a  policeman  who  was  responsible 
for  its  general  order  and  who  became  a  valued 
adjunct  of  the  House. 

During  fifteen  years  this  public-spirited  owner 
of  the  property  paid  all  the  taxes,  and  when  the 
block  was  finally  sold  he  made  possible  the  play- 
ground equipment  of  a  near-by  school  yard.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  dispossessed  tenants,  a  group 
of  whom  had  to  be  evicted  by  legal  process  before 
their  houses  could  be  torn  down,  have  never 
ceased  to  mourn  their  former  estates.  Only  the 
other  day  I  met  upon  the  street  an  old  Italian 
harness  maker,  who  said  that  he  had  never  suc- 
ceeded so  well  anywhere  else  nor  found  a  place 
that  "seemed  so  much  like  Italy." 

Festivities  of  various  sorts  were  held  on  this 
early  playground,  always  a  Alay  day  celebration 
with  its  Maypole  dance  and  its  May  queen.  I 
remember  that  one  year  the  honor  of  being  queen 
was  offered  to  the  little  girl  who  should  pick  up 
the  largest  number  of  scraps  of  paper  which  lit- 
tered all  the  streets  and  alleys.  The  children  that 
spring  had  been  organized  into  a  league  and  each 
member  had  been  provided  with  a  stifi"  piece  of 
wire  upon  the  sharpened  point  of  which  stray  bits 


292    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

of  paper  were  impaled  and  later  soberly  counted 
off  into  a  large  box  in  the  Hull-House  alley.  The 
little  Italian  girl  who  thus  won  the  scepter  took  it 
very  gravely  as  the  just  reward  of  hard  labor, 
and  we  were  all  so  absorbed  in  the  desire  for  clean 
and  tidy  streets  that  we  were  wholly  oblivious  to 
the  incongruity  of  thus  selecting  "the  queen  of 
love  and  beauty." 

It  was  at  the  end  of  the  second  year  that  we 
received  a  visit  from  the  warden  of  Toynbee  Hall 
and  his  wife,  as  they  were  returning  to  England 
from  a  journey  around  the  world.  They  had  lived 
in  East  London  for  many  years,  and  had  been 
identified  with  the  public  movements  for  its  better- 
ment. They  were  much  shocked  that,  in  a  new 
country  with  conditions  still  plastic  and  hopeful, 
so  little  attention  had  been  paid  to  experiments 
and  methods  of  amelioration  which  had  already 
been  tried ;  and  .they  looked  in  vain  through  our 
library  for  blue  books  and  governmental  reports 
which  recorded  painstaking  study  into  the  condi- 
tions of  English  cities. 

They  were  the  first  of  a  long  line  of  English 
visitors  to  express  the  conviction  that  many  things 
in  Chicago  were  untoward  not  through  paucity 
of  public  spirit  but  through  a  lack  of  political 
machinery  adapted  to  modern  city  life.  This 
was  not  all  of  the  situation  but  perhaps  no  casual 
visitor  could  be  expected  to  see  that  these  matters 
of  detail  seemed  unimportant  to  a  city  in  the  first 


ACTIVITIES   AND   INVESTIGATIONS   293 


J^/' 


294    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

flush  of  youth,  impatient  of  correction  and  con- 
vinced that  all  would  be  well  with  its  future. 
The  most  obvious  faults  were  those  connected 
with  the  congested  housing  of  the  immigrant 
population,  nine  tenths  of  them  from  the  coun- 
try, who  carried  on  all  sorts  of  traditional  activi- 
ties in  the  crowded  tenements.  That  a  group  of 
Greeks  should  be  permitted  to  slaughter  sheep  in 
a  basement,  that  Italian  women  should  be  allowed 
to  sort  over  rags  collected  from  the  city  dumps, 
not  only  within  the  city  limits  but  in  a  court 
swarming  with  little  children,  that  immigrant 
bakers  should  continue  unmolested  to  bake  bread 
for  their  neighbors  in  unspeakably  filthy  spaces 
under  the  pavement,  appeared  incredible  to  visitors 
accustomed  to  careful  city  regulations.  I  recall 
two  visits  made  to  the  Italian  quarter  by  John 
Burns,  —  the  second,  thirteen  years  after  the  first. 
During  the  latter  visit  it  seemed  to  him  unbeliev- 
able that  a  certain  house  owned  by  a  rich  Italian 
should  have  been  permitted  to  survive.  He  re- 
membered with  the  greatest  minuteness  the  posi- 
tions of  the  houses  on  the  court,  with  the  exact 
space  between  the  front  and  rear  tenements, 
and  he  asked  at  once  whether  we  had  been  able 
to  cut  a  window  into  a  dark  hall  as  he  had  recom- 
mended thirteen  years  before.  Although  we  were 
obliged  to  confess  that  the  landlord  would  not 
permit  the  window  to  be  cut,  we  wxre  able  to 
report  that  a  City  Homes  Association  had  existed 


ACTIVITIES   AND   INVESTIGATIONS   295 

for  ten  years  ;  that  following  a  careful  study  of 
tenement  conditions  in  Chicago,  the  text  of  which 
had  been  wTitten  by  a  Hull-House  resident,  the 
association  had  obtained  the  enactment  of  a  model 
tenement-house  code,  and  that  their  secretary  had 
carefully  watched  the  administration  of  the  law 
for  years  so  that  its  operation  might  not  be  mini- 
mized by  the  granting  of  too  many  exceptions  in 
the  city  council.  Our  progress  still  seemed  slow 
t9  Mr.  Burns  because  in  Chicago  the  actual 
houses  were  quite  unchanged,  embodying  features 
long  since  declared  illegal  in  London.  Only  this 
year  could  we  have  reported  to  him,  had  he  again 
come  to  challenge  us,  that  the  provisions  of  the 
law  had  at  last  been  extended  to  existing  houses 
and  that  a  conscientious  corps  of  Inspectors  under 
an  efficient  chief,  were  fast  remedying  the  most 
glaring  evils,  while  a  band  of  nurses  and  doctors 
were  following  hard  upon  the  "trail  of  the  white 
hearse." 

The  mere  consistent  enforcement  of  existing 
laws  and  efforts  for  their  advance  often  placed 
Hull-House,  at  least  temporarily,  into  strained 
relations  with  its  neighbors.  I  recall  a  continuous 
warfare  against  local  landlords  who  would  move 
wrecks  of  old  houses  as  a  nucleus  for  new  ones  in 
order  to  evade  the  provisions  of  the  building  code, 
and  a  certain  Italian  neighbor  who  was  filled  with 
bitterness  because  his  new  rear  tenement  was 
discovered  to  be  illegal.     It  seemed  impossible  to 


296    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

make  him  understand  that  the  health  of  the  tenants 
was  in  any  wise  as  important  as  his  undisturbed 
rents.  ' 

Nevertheless  many  evils  constantly  arise  in 
Chicago  from  congested  housing  which  wiser 
cities  forestall  and  prevent ;  the  inevitable 
boarders  crowded  into  a  dark  tenement  already 
too  small  for  the  use  of  the  immigrant  family 
occupying  it;  the  surprisingly  large  number  of 
delinquent  girls  who  have  become  criminally  in- 
volved with  their  own  fathers  and  uncles ;  the 
school  children  who  cannot  find  a  quiet  spot  in 
which  to  read  or  study  and  who  perforce  go  into 
the  streets  each  evening;  the  tuberculosis  super- 
induced and  fostered  by  the  inadequate  rooms  and 
breathing  spaces.  One  of  the  Hull-House  resi- 
dents, under  the  direction  of  a  Chicago  physician 
who  stands  high  as  an  authority  on  tuberculosis 
and  who  devotes  a  large  proportion  of  his  time  to 
our  vicinity,  made  an  investigation  into  housing 
conditions  as  related  to  tuberculosis  with  a  result 
as  startling  as  that  of  the  "lung  block"  in  New 
York. 

It  is  these  subtle  evils  of  wretched  and  inadequate 
housing  which  are  often  most  disastrous.  In  the 
summer  of  1902  during  an  epidemic  of  typhoid  fever 
in  which  our  ward,  although  containing  but  one 
thirty-sixth  of  the  population  of  the  city,  registered 
one  sixth  of  the  total  number  of  deaths,  two  of 
the  Hull-House  residents  made  an  investigation  of 


ACTIVITIES   AND   INVESTIGATIONS   297 

the  methods  of  plumbing  in  the  houses  adjacent 
to  conspicuous  groups  of  fever  cases.  They  dis- 
covered among  the  people  who  had  been  exposed 
to  the  infection,  a  widow  who  had  lived  in  the 
ward  for  a  number  of  years,  in  a  comfortable 
little  house  of  her  own.  Although  the  Italian  im- 
migrants were  closing  in  all  round  her,  she  was 
not  willing  to  sell  her  property  and  to  move  away 
until  she  had  finished  the  education  of  her  chil- 
dren. In  the  meantime  she  held  herself  quite 
aloof  from  her  Italian  neighbors  and  could  never 
be  drawn  into  any  of  the  public  efforts  to  secure 
a  better  code  of  tenement-house  sanitation.  Her 
two  daughters  were  sent  to  an  eastern  college. 
One  June  when  one  of  them  had  graduated  and 
the  other  still  had  two  years  before  she  took  her 
degree,  they  came  to  the  spotless  little  house  and 
to  their  self-sacrificing  mother  for  the  summer  holi- 
day. They  both  fell  ill  with  typhoid  fever  and 
one  daughter  died  because  the  mother's  utmost 
efforts  could  not  keep  the  infection  out  of  her 
own  house.  The  entire  disaster  affords,  perhaps, 
a  fair  illustration  of  the  futility  of  the  individual 
conscience  which  would  isolate  a  family  from  the 
rest  of  the  community  and  its   interests. 

The  careful  information  collected  concerning 
the  juxtaposition  of  the  typhoid  cases  to  the 
various  systems  of  plumbing  and  nonplumbing, 
was  made  the  basis  of  a  bacteriological  study  by 
another  resident,  Dr.  Alice  Hamilton,   as  to  the 


298     TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

possibility  of  the  infection  having  been  carried  by 
flies.  Her  researches  were  so  convincing  that 
they  have  been  incorporated  into  the  body  of 
scientific  data  supporting  that  theory,  but  there 
were  also  practical  results  from  the  investigation. 
It  was  discovered  that  the  wretched  sanitary  ap- 
pliances through  which  alone  the  infection  could 
have  become  so  widely  spread,  would  not  have 
been  permitted  to  remain,  unless  the  city  inspector 
had  either  been  criminally  careless  or  open  to  the 
arguments  of  favored  landlords. 

The  agitation  finally  resulted  in  a  long  and  stir- 
ring trial  before  the  civil  service  board  of  half  of 
the  employees  in  the  Sanitary  Bureau,  with  the 
final  discharge  of  eleven  out  of  the  entire  force  of 
twenty-four.  The  inspector  in  our  neighborhood 
was  a  kindly  old  man,  greatly  distressed  over  the 
affair,  and  quite  unable  to  understand  why  he 
should  not  have  used  his  discretion  as  to  the  time 
when  a  landlord  should  be  forced  to  put  in  modern 
appliances.  If  he  was  "very  poor,"  or  "just  about 
to  sell  his  place,"  or  "  sure  that  the  house  would 
be  torn  down  to  make  room  for  a  factory,"  why 
should  one  "inconvenience"  him  ?  The  old  man 
died  soon  after  the  trial,  feeling  persecuted  to  the 
very  last  and  not  in  the  least  understanding  what 
it  was  all  about.  We  were  amazed  at  the  com- 
mercial ramifications  which  graft  in  the  city  hall 
involved  and  at  the  indignation  which  interfer- 
ence with  it  produced.     Hull-House  lost  some  large 


ACTIVITIES  AND   INVESTIGATIONS   299 

subscriptions  as  the  result  of  this  investigation,  a 
loss  which,  if  not  easy  to  bear,  was  at  least  com- 
prehensible. We  also  uncovered  unexpected  graft 
in  connection  with  the  plumbers'  unions,  and  but 
for  the  fearless  testimony  of  one  of  their  members, 
could  never  have  brought  the  trial  to  a  successful 
issue. 

Inevitable  misunderstanding  also  developed  in 
connection  with  the  attempt  on  the  part  of  Hull- 
House  residents  to  prohibit  the  sale  of  cocaine  to 
minors,  which  brought  us  into  sharp  conflict  with 
many  druggists.  I  recall  an  Italian  druggist  liv- 
ing on  the  edge  of  the  neighborhood,  who  finally 
came  with  a  committee  of  his  fellow  countrymen 
to  see  what  Hull-House  wanted  of  him,  thoroughly 
convinced  that  no  such  effort  could  be  disinter- 
ested. One  dreary  trial  after  another  had  been 
lost  through  the  inadequacy  of  the  existing  legis- 
lation and  after  many  attempts  to  secure  better 
legal  regulation  of  its  sale,  a  new  law  with  the 
cooperation  of  many  agencies  was  finally  secured 
in  1907.  Through  all  this  the  Italian  druggist, 
who  had  greatly  profited  by  the  sale  of  cocaine 
to  boys,  only  felt  outraged  and  abused.  And  yet 
the  thought  of  this  campaign  brings  before  my 
mind  with  irresistible  force,  a  young  Italian  boy 
who  died,  —  a  victim  to  the  drug  at  the  age  of 
seventeen.  He  had  been  in  our  kindergarten  as  a 
handsome  merry  child,  in  our  clubs  as  a  vivacious 
boy,  and  then  gradually  there  was  an  eclipse  of 


300    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

all  that  was  animated  and  joyous  and  promising, 
and  when  I  at  last  saw  him  in  his  coffin,  it  was 
impossible  to  connect  that  haggard  shriveled  body 
with  what  I  had  known  before. 

A  midwife  investigation,  undertaken  in  connec- 
tion with  the  Chicago  Medical  Society,  while 
showing  the  great  need  of  further  state  regulation 
in  the  interest  of  the  most  ignorant  mothers  and 
helpless  children,  brought  us  into  conflict  with 
one  of  the  most  venerable  of  all  customs.  Was 
all  this  a  part  of  the  unending  struggle  between 
the  old  and  new,  or  were  these  oppositions  so  un- 
expected and  so  unlooked  for  merely  a  reminder 
of  that  old  bit  of  wisdom  that  "there  is  no  guard- 
ing against  interpretations  "  ?  Perhaps  more  subtle 
still,  they  were  due  to  that  very  super-refinement 
of  disinterestedness  which  will  not  justify  itself, 
that  it  may  feel  superior  to  public  opinion.  Some 
of  our  investigations  of  course  had  no  such  un- 
toward results,  such  as  "An  Intensive  Study  of 
Truancy"  undertaken  by  a  resident  of  Hull- 
House  in  connection  with  the  compulsory  educa- 
tion department  of  the  Board  of  Education  and 
the  Visiting  Nurses  Association.  The  resident, 
Mrs.  Britton,  who,  having  had  charge  of  our 
children's  clubs  for  many  years,  knew  thousands 
of  children  in  the  neighborhood,  made  a  detailed 
study  of  three  hundred  families  tracing  back  the 
habitual  truancy  of  the  children  to  economic 
and  social  causes.     This  investigation  preceded  a 


ACTIVITIES  AND   INVESTIGATIONS   301 

most  interesting  conference  on  truancy  held  under 
a  committee  of  which  I  was  a  member  from  the 
Chicago  Board  of  Education.  It  left  lasting  re- 
sults upon  the  administration  of  the  truancy  law 
as  well  as  the  cooperation  of  volunteer  bodies. 

We   continually   conduct   small   but   careful   m- 
vestigations  at  Hull-House,  which  may  guide  us 
in   our    immediate    doings    such    as    two    recently 
undertaken  by  Mrs.  Britton,  one  upon  the  read- 
ing   of    school    children    before    new    books    were 
bought  for  the  children's  club  libraries,   and  an- 
other  on    the    proportion   of   tuberculosis    among 
school  children,  before  we  opened  a  little  experi- 
mental  outdoor  school  on  one  of   our  balconies. 
Some  of  the  Hull-House  investigations  are  purely 
negative  in  result ;    we  once  made  an  attempt  to 
test  the  fatigue  of  factory  girls  in  order  to  deter- 
mine how  far  overwork  superinduced  the  tuber- 
culosis   to    which    such    a    surprising    number    of 
them  were  victims.     The  one  scientific  instrument 
it  seemed  possible  to  use  was  an  ergograph,  a  com- 
plicated and  expensive  instrument  kindly  lent  to 
us  from  the  physiological  laboratory  of  the  Uni- 
versity  of   Chicago.     I    remember    the    imposing 
procession  we  made  from  Hull-House  to  the  factory 
full   of  working  women,  in  which  the  proprietor 
allowed  us  to  make  the  tests;    first  there  was  the 
precious  instrument  on  a  hand  truck  guarded  by 
an  anxious  student  and  the  young  physician  who 
was  going  to  take  the  tests  every  afternoon ;  then 


302    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

there  was  Dr.  Hamilton  the  resident  In  charge  of 
the  Investigation,  walking  with  a  scientist  who 
was  Interested  to  see  that  the  Instrument  was 
properly  Installed ;  I  followed  In  the  rear  to  talk 
once  more  to  the  proprietor  of  the  factory  to  be 
quite  sure  that  he  would  permit  the  experiment  to 
go  on.  The  result  of  all  this  preparation,  however, 
was  to  have  the  instrument  record  less  fatigue  at  the 
end  of  the  day  than  at  the  beginning,  not  because 
the  girls  had  not  worked  hard  and  were  not  ''dog 
tired"  as  they  confessed,  but  because  the  instru- 
ment was  not  fitted  to  find  it  out. 

For  many  years  we  have  administered  a  branch 
station  of  the  federal  post  ofiice  at  Hull-House, 
which  we  applied  for  In  the  first  Instance  because 
our  neighbors  lost  such  a  large  percentage  of  the 
money  they  sent  to  Europe,  through  the  commis- 
sions to  middle  men.  The  experience  in  the  post 
office  constantly  gave  us  data  for  urging  the  estab- 
lishment of  postal  savings  as  we  saw  one  per- 
plexed immigrant  after  another  turning  away  in 
bewilderment  when  he  was  told  that  the  United 
States  post  ofiice  did  not  receive  savings. 

We  find  increasingly,  however,  that  the  best 
results  are  to  be  obtained  in  investigations  as  in 
other  undertakings,  by  combining  our  researches 
with  those  of  other  public  bodies  or  with  the 
State  Itself.  When  all  the  Chicago  Settlements 
found  themselves  distressed  over  the  condition  of 
the   newsboys   who,   because   they   are   merchants 


.  ACTIVITIES  AND   INVESTIGATIONS   303 

and  not  employees,  do  not  come  under  the  pro- 
visions of  the  Illinois  child  labor  law,  they 
united  in  the  investigation  of  a  thousand  young 
newsboys,  who  were  all  interviewed  on  the  streets 
during  the  same  twenty-four  hours.  Their  school 
and  domestic  status  was  easily  determined  later, 
for  many  of  the  boys  lived  in  the  immediate 
neighborhoods  of  the  ten  Settlements  which  had 
undertaken  the  investigation.  The  report  em- 
bodying the  results  of  the  investigation  recom- 
mended a  city  ordinance  containing  features  from 
the  Boston  and  Buffalo  regulations,  and  although 
an  ordinance  was  drawn  up  and  a  strenuous  effort 
was  made  to  bring  it  to  the  attention  of  the  alder- 
men, none  of  them  would  introduce  it  into  the  city 
council  without  newspaper  backing.  We  were  able 
to  agitate  for  it  again  at  the  annual  meeting  of  the 
National  Child  Labor  Committee  which  was  held 
in  Chicago  in  1908,  and  which  was  of  course  re- 
ported in  ^^apers  tlirdtighout  the  entire  country. 
This  meeting  also  demonstrated  that  local  meas- 
ures can  sometimes  be  urged  most  effectively  when 
joined  to  the  efforts  of  a  national  body.  Undoubt- 
edly the  best  discussions  ever  held  upon  the  opera- 
tion and  status  of  the  Illinois  law,  were  those  which 
took  place  then.  The  needs  of  the  Illinois  children 
were  regarded  in  connection  with  the  children  of 
the  nation  and  advanced  health  measures  for  Illi- 
nois were  compared  with  those  of  other  states. 
The  investigations  of  Hull-House  thus  tend  to  be 


304    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

merged  with  those  of  larger  organizations,  from  the 
investigation  of  the  social  value  of  saloons  made 
for  the  Committee  of  Fifty  in  1896,  to  the  one  on 
Infant  mortality  in  relation  to  nationality,  made 
for  the  American  Academy  of  Science  in  1909. 
This  Is  also  true  of  Hull-House  activities  in  regard 
to  public  movements,  some  of  which  are  inaugu- 
rated by  the  residents  of  other  Settlements,  as  the 
Chicago  School  of  Civics  and  Philanthropy, 
founded  by  the  splendid  efforts  of  Dr.  Graham 
Taylor  for  many  years  head  of  Chicago  Commons. 
All  of  our  recent  investigations  into  housing  have 
been  under  the  department  of  investigation  of  this 
school  with  which  several  of  the  Hull-House  resi- 
dents are  identified,  quite  as  our  active  measures  to 
secure  better  housing  conditions  have  been  carried 
on  with  the  City  Homes  Association  and  through 
the  cooperation  of  one  of  our  residents  who  several 
years  ago  was  appointed  a  sanitary  inspector  on 
the  city  staflP. 

Perhaps  Dr.  Taylor  himself  offers  the  best 
possible  example  of  the  value  of  Settlement  ex- 
perience to  public  undertakings,  in  his  manifold 
public  activities  of  which  one  might  Instance  his 
work  at  the  moment  upon  a  commission  recently 
appointed  by  the  governor  of  Illinois  to  report  upon 
the  best  method  of  Industrial  Insurance  or  Em- 
ployer's Liability  Acts,  and  his  influence  in  securing 
another  to  study  into  the  subject  of  Industrial 
Diseases.     The  actual  factory  investigation  under 


ACTIVITIES   AND   INVESTIGATIONS   305 

the  latter  is  in  charge  of  Dr.  Hamilton,  of  Hull- 
House,  whose  long  residence  in  an  industrial  neigh- 
borhood as  well  as  her  scientific  attainment,  give 
her  peculiar  qualifications  for  the  undertaking. 

And  so  a  Settlement  is  led  along  from  the  con- 
crete to  the  abstract,  as  may  easily  be  illustrated. 
Many  years  ago  a  tailors'  union  meeting  at  Hull- 
House  asked  our  cooperation  in  tagging  the  vari- 
ous parts  of  a  man's  coat  in  such  wise  as  to  show 
the  money  paid  to  the  people  who  had  made  it ; 
one  tag  for  the  cutting  and  another  for  the  button- 
holes, another  for  the  finishing  and  so  on,  the 
resulting  total  to  be  compared  with  the  selling 
price  of  the  coat  itself.  It  quickly  became  evi- 
dent that  we  had  no  way  of  computing  how  much 
of  this  larger  balance  was  spent  for  salesmen, 
commercial  travelers,  rent  and  management,  and 
the  poor  tagged  coat  was  finally  left  hanging 
limply  in  a  closet  as  if  discouraged  with  the  at- 
tempt. But  the  desire  of  the  manual  worker  to 
know  the  relation  of  his  own  labor  to  the  whole 
is  not  only  legitimate  but  must  form  the  basis  of 
any  intelligent  action  for  his  improvement.  It  was 
therefore  with  the  hope  of  reform  in  the  sewing 
trades  that  the  Hull-House  residents  testified  be- 
fore the  Federal  Industrial  Commission  in  1900, 
and  much  later  with  genuine  enthusiasm  joined 
with  trades-unionists  and  other  public-spirited  citi- 
zens in  an  industrial  exhibit  which  made  a  graphic 
presentation  of  the  conditions  and  rewards  of  labor. 


3o6    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

The  large  casino  building  in  which  it  was  held  was 
filled  every  day  and  evening  for  two  weeks,  show- 
ing how  popular  such  information  is,  if  it  can  be 
presented  graphically.  As  an  illustration  of  this 
same  moving  from  the  smaller  to  the  larger,  I 
might  instance  the  efforts  of  Miss  McDowell  of 
the  University  of  Chicago  Settlement  and  others, 
in  urging  upon  Congress  the  necessity  for  a  special 
investigation  into  the  condition  of  women  and 
children  in  industry  because  we  had  discovered  the 
insuperable  difficulties  of  smaller  investigations, 
notably  one  undertaken  for  the  Illinois  Bureau  of 
Labor  by  Mrs.  Van  der  Vaart  of  Neighborhood 
House  and  by  Miss  Breckinridge  of  the  University 
of  Chicago.  This  investigation  made  clear  that  it 
was  as  impossible  to  detach  the  girls  working  in  the 
stockyards  from  their  sisters  in  industry,  as  it  was 
to  urge  special  legislation  on  their  behalf. 

In  the  earlier  years  of  the  American  Settlements, 
the  residents  were  sometimes  impatient  with  the 
accepted  methods  of  charitable  administration  and 
hoped,  through  residence  in  an  industrial  neighbor- 
hood, to  discover  more  cooperative  and  advanced 
methods  of  dealing  with  the  problems  of  poverty 
which  are  so  dependent  upon  industrial  maladjust- 
ment. But  during  twenty  years,  the  Settlements 
have  seen  the  charitable  people,  through  their  very 
knowledge  of  the  poor,  constantly  approach  nearer 
to  those  methods  formerly  designated  as  radical. 
The    residents,    so    far    from   holding   aloof  from 


ACTIVITIES  AND   INVESTIGATIONS   307 

organized  charity,  find  testimony,  certainly  in  the 
National  Conferences,  that  out  of  the  most  persist- 
ent and  intelligent  efforts  to  alleviate  poverty,  will 
in  all  probability  arise  the  most  significant  sug- 
gestions for  eradicating  poverty.  In  the  hearing 
before  a  congressional  committee  for  the  estab- 
lishment of  a  Children's  Bureau,  residents  in 
American  Settlements  joined  their  fellow  philan- 
thropists in  urging  the  need  of  this  indispensable 
instrument  for  collecting  and  disseminating  in- 
formation which  would  make  possible  concerted 
intelligent  action  on  behalf  of  children. 

Mr.  Howells  has  said  that  we  are  all  so  besotted 
with  our  novel  reading  that  we  have  lost  the  power 
of  seeing  certain  aspects  of  life  with  any  sense  of 
reality  because  we  are  continually  looking  for  the 
possible  romance.  The  description  might  apply  to 
the  earlier  years  of  the  American  settlement,  but 
certainly  the  later  years  are  filled  with  discoveries 
In  actual  life  as  romantic  as  they  are  unexpected. 
If  I  may  illustrate  one  of  these  romantic  discoveries 
from  my  own  experience,  I  would  cite  the  indica- 
tions of  an  internationalism  as  sturdy  and  virile  as 
It  is  unprecedented  which  I  have  seen  In  our  cos- 
mopolitan neighborhood  :  when  a  South  Italian 
Catholic  is  forced  by  the  very  exigencies  of  the 
situation  to  make  friends  with  an  Austrian  Jew 
representing  another  nationality  and  another  re- 
ligion, both  of  which  cut  Into  all  his  most  cherished 
prejudices,   he  finds   it  harder  to  utilize  them   a 


3o8    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

second  time  and  gradually  loses  them.  He  thus 
modifies  his  provincialism  for  if  an  old  enemy  work- 
ing by  his  side  has  turned  into  a  friend,  almost 
anything  may  happen.  When,  therefore,  I  became 
identified  with  the  peace  movement  both  in  its 
International  and  National  Conventions,  I  hoped 
that  this  internationalism  engendered  in  the  immi- 
grant quarters  of  American  cities  might  be  recog- 
nized as  an  effective  instrument  in  the  cause  of 
peace.  I  first  set  it  forth  with  some  misgiving 
before  the  Convention  held  in  Boston  in  1904  and 
it  is  always  a  pleasure  to  recall  the  hearty  assent 
given  to  it  by  Professor  William  James. 

I  have  always  objected  to  the  phrase  *' socio- 
logical laboratory"  applied  to  us,  because  Settle- 
ments should  be  something  much  more  human 
and  spontaneous  than  such  a  phrase  connotes, 
and  yet  it  is  inevitable  that  the  residents  should 
know  their  own  neighborhoods  more  thoroughly 
than  any  other,  and  that  their  experiences  there 
•should  aifect  their  convictions. 

Years  ago  I  was  much  entertained  by  a  story 
told  at  the  Chicago  Woman's  Club  by  one  of  its 
ablest  members  in  the  discussion  following  a  paper 
of  mine  on  "The  Outgrowths  of  Toynbee  Hall." 
She  said  that  when  she  was  a  little  girl  playing  in 
her  mother's  garden,  she  one  day  discovered  a 
small  toad  who  seemed  to  her  very  forlorn  and 
lonely,  although  as  she  did  not  in  the  least  know 
how  to  comfort  him,  she  reluctantly  left  him  to 


ACTIVITIES  AND   INVESTIGATIONS   309 

his  fate;  later  in  the  day,  quite  at  the  other  end 
of  the  garden,  she  found  a  large  toad,  also  ap- 
parently without  family  and  friends.  With  a 
heart  full  of  tender  sympathy,  she  took  a  stick 
and  by  exercising  infinite  patience  and  some  skill, 
she  finally  pushed  the  little  toad  through  the 
entire  length  of  the  garden  into  the  company  of 
the  big  toad,  when,  to  her  inexpressible  horror 
and  surprise,  the  big  toad  opened  his  mouth  and 
swallow^ed  the  little  one.  The  moral  of  the  tale 
was  clear  applied  to  people  who  lived  "where  they 
did  not  naturally  belong,"  although  I  protested 
that  was  exactly  w^hat  we  wanted  —  to  be  swal- 
lowed and  digested,  to  disappear  into  the  bulk  of 
the  people. 

Twenty  years  later  I  am  willing  to  testify  that 
something  of  the  sort  does  take  place  after  years 
of  identification  with  an  industrial  community. 


CHAPTER  XIV 
Civic  Cooperation 

One  of  the  first  lessons  we  learned  at  Hull- 
House  was  that  private  beneficence  is  totally  in- 
adequate to  deal  with  the  vast  numbers  of  the 
city's  disinherited.  We  also  quickly  came  to 
realize  that  there  are  certain  types  of  v/retched- 
ness  from  which  every  private  philanthropy 
shrinks  and  which  are  cared  for  only  in  those 
wards  of  the  county  hospital  provided  for  the 
wrecks  of  vicious  living  or  in  the  city's  isolation 
hospital  for  smallpox  patients. 

I  have  heard  a  broken-hearted  mother  exclaim 
when  her  erring  daughter  came  home  at  last  too 
broken  and  diseased  to  be  taken  into  the  family 
she  had  disgraced,  "There  is  no  place  for  her 
but  the  top  floor  of  the  County  Hospital ;  they 
will  have  to  take  her  there,"  and  this  only  after 
every  possible  expedient  had  been  tried  or  sug- 
gested. This  aspect  of  governmental  responsi- 
bility was  unforgetably  borne  in  upon  me  during 
the  smallpox  epidemic  following  the  World's  Fair, 
when  one  of  the  residents,  Mrs.  Kelley,  as  State 
Factory  Inspector  was  much  concerned  in  dis- 
covering and  destroying  clothing  which  was  being 

310 


Julia  C.  Lathrop. 


CIVIC   COOPERATION  311 

finished  in  houses  containing  unreported  cases  of 
smallpox.  The  deputy  most  successful  in  locat- 
ing such  cases  lived  at  Hull-House  during  the 
epidemic  because  he  did  not  wish  to  expose  his 
own  family.  Another  resident,  Miss  Lathrop,  as 
a  member  of  the  State  Board  of  Charities,  went 
back  and  forth  to  the  crowded  pest  house  which 
had  been  hastily  constructed  on  a  stretch  of 
prairie  west  of  the  city.  As  Hull-House  was 
already  so  exposed,  it  seemed  best  for  the  special 
smallpox  inspectors  from  the  Board  of  Health  to 
take  their  meals  and  change  their  clothing  there 
before  they  went  to  their  respective  homes.  All 
of  these  officials  had  accepted  without  question 
and  as  implicit  in  public  office,  the  obligation  to 
carry  on  the  dangerous  and  difficult  undertakings 
for  which  private  philanthropy  is  unfitted,  as  if 
the  commonalty  of  compassion  represented  by 
the  State  was  more  comprehending  than  that  of 
any  individual  group. 

It  was  as  early  as  our  second  winter  on  Hal- 
sted  Street  that  one  of  the  Hull-House  residents 
received  an  appointment  from  the  Cook  County 
agent  as  a  county  visitor.  She  reported  at  the 
agency  each  morning,  and  all  the  cases  within  a 
radius  of  ten  blocks  from  Hull-House  were  given 
to  her  for  Investigation.  This  gave  her  a  legiti- 
mate opportunity  for  knowing  the  poorest  people 
in  the  neighborhood  and  also  for  understanding 
the   county  method  of  outdoor  relief.     The  com- 


312    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

missloners  were  at  first  dubious  of  the  value  of 
such  a  visitor  and  predicted  that  a  woman  would 
be  a  perfect  "coal  chute"  for  giving  away  county 
supplies,  but  they  gradually  came  to  depend 
upon  her  suggestion  and  advice. 

In  1893  this  same  resident,  Miss  Julia  C. 
Lathrop,  was  appointed  by  the  governor  a  mem- 
ber of  the  Illinois  State  Board  of  Charities.  She 
served  in  this  capacity  for  two  consecutive  terms 
and  was  later  reappointed  to  a  third  term.  Per- 
haps her  most  valuable  contribution  towards  the 
enlargement  and  reorganization  of  the  charitable 
institutions  of  the  State  came  through  her  in- 
timate knowledge  of  the  beneficiaries,  and  her 
experience  demonstrated  that  it  is  only  through 
long  residence  among  the  poor  that  an  official 
could  have  learned  to  view  public  institutions  as 
she  did,  from  the  standpoint  of  the  inmates 
rather  than  from  that  of  the  managers.  Since 
that  early  day,  residents  of  Hull-House  have  spent 
much  time  in  working  for  the  civil  service  methods 
of  appointment  for  employees  in  the  county  and 
State  institutions ;  for  the  establishment  of  State 
colonies  for  the  care  of  epileptics  ;  and  for  a  dozen 
other  enterprises  which  occupy  that  borderland 
between  charitable  effort  and  legislation.  In  this 
borderland  we  cooperate  in  many  civic  enterprises 
for  I  think  we  may  claim  that  Hull-House  has 
always  held  its  activities  lightly,  ready  to  hand  them 
over  to  whosoever  would  carry  them  on  properly. 


CIVIC   COOPERATION  313 

Miss  Starr  had  early  made  a  collection  of 
framed  photographs,  largely  of  the  paintings 
studied  in  her  art  class,  which  became  the  basis 
of  a  loan  collection  first  used  by  the  Hull-House 
students  and  later  extended  to  the  public  schools. 
It  may  be  fair  to  suggest  that  this  effort  was  the 
nucleus  of  the  Public  School  Art  Society  which 
was  later  formed  in  the  city  and  of  which  Aliss 
Starr  was  the  first  president. 

In  our  first  two  summers  we  had  maintained 
three  baths  in  the  basement  of  our  own  house 
for  the  use  of  the  neighborhood  and  they  afforded 
some  experience  and  argument  for  the  erection  of 
the  first  public  bathhouse  in  Chicago,  which  was 
built  on  a  neighboring  street  and  opened  under 
the  city  Board  of  Health.  The  lot  upon  which 
it  was  erected  belonged  to  a  friend  of  Hull-House 
who  offered  it  to  the  city  without  rent,  and  this 
enabled  the  city  to  erect  the  first  public  bath 
from  the  small  appropriation  of  ten  thousand 
dollars.  Great  fear  was  expressed  by  the  public 
authorities  that  the  baths  would  not  be  used 
and  the  old  story  of  the  bathtubs  in  model  tene- 
ments which  had  been  turned  into  coal  bins  was 
often  quoted  to  us.  We  were  supplied,  however, 
with  the  incontrovertible  argument  that  in  our 
adjacent  third  square  mile  there  were  in  1892 
but  three  bathtubs  and  that  this  fact  was  much 
complained  of  by  many  of  the  tenement-house 
dwellers.     Our    contention    was    justified    by    the 


314    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

immediate  and  overflowing  use  of  the  public  baths, 
as  we  had  before  been  sustained  in  the  contention 
that  an  immigrant  population  would  respond  to 


opportunities  for  reading  when  the  Public  Library- 
Board  had  established  a  branch  reading  room  at 
Hull-House. 


CIVIC   COOPERATION  315 

We  also  quickly  discovered  that  nothing  brought 
us  so  absolutely  into  comradeship  with  our  neigh- 
bors as  mutual  and  sustained  effort  such  as  the 
paving  of  a  street,  the  closing  of  a  gambling  house, 
or  the  restoration  of  a  veteran  police  sergeant. 

Several  of  these  earlier  attempts  at  civic  co- 
operation were  undertaken  in  connection  with  the 
Hull-House  Men's  Club  which  had  been  organized 
in  the  spring  of  1893,  had  been  incorporated  under 
a  State  charter  of  its  own  and  had  occupied  a  club 
room  in  the  gymnasium  building.  This  club  ob- 
tained an  early  success  in  one  of  the  political 
struggles  in  the  ward  and  thus  fastened  upon 
itself  a  specious  reputation  for  political  power.  It 
was  at  last  so  torn  by  the  dissensions  of  two  po- 
litical factions  which  attempted  to  capture  it  that, 
although  it  is  still  an  existing  organization,  it  has 
never  regained  the  prestige  of  its  first  five  years. 
Its  early  political  success  came  in  a  campaign 
Hull-House  had  instigated  against  a  powerful 
alderman  who  has  held  office  for  more  than  twenty 
years  in  the  nineteenth  ward,  and  who,  although 
notoriously  corrupt.  Is  still  firmly  intrenched 
among  his  constituents. 

Hull-House  has  had  to  do  with  three  cam- 
paigns organized  against  him.  In  the  first  one 
he  was  apparently  only  amused  at  our  "Sunday 
School"  effort  and  did  little  to  oppose  the  elec- 
tion to  the  aldermanic  office  of  a  member  of  the 
Hull-House    Men's    Club    who    thus    became    his 


3i6    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

colleague  in  the  city  council.  When  Hull-House, 
however,  made  an  effort  in  the  following  spring 
against  the  reelection  of  the  alderman  himself,  we 
encountered  the  most  determined  and  skillful 
opposition.  In  these  campaigns  we  doubtless  de- 
pended too  much  upon  the  idealistic  appeal  for  we 
did  not  yet  comprehend  the  element  of  reality 
always  brought  into  the  political  struggle  in  such  a 
neighborhood  where  politics  deal  so  directly  with 
getting  a  job  and  earning  a  living. 

We  soon  discovered  that  approximately  one  out 
of  every  five  voters  in  the  nineteenth  ward  at  that 
time  held  a  job  dependent  upon  the  good  will  of 
the  alderman.  There  were  no  civil  service  rules  to 
interfere  and  the  unskilled  voter  swept  the  street 
and  dug  the  sewer,  as  secure  in  his  position  as  the 
more  sophisticated  voter  tended  a  bridge  or  occu- 
pied an  office  chair  in  the  city  hall.  The  alderman 
was  even  more  fortunate  in  finding  places  with  the 
franchise-seeking  corporations ;  it  took  us  some 
time  to  understand  why  so  large  a  proportion  of 
our  neighbors  were  street-car  employees  and  why 
we  had  such  a  large  club  composed  solely  of  tele- 
phone girls.  Our  powerful  alderman  had  various 
methods  of  intrenching  himself.  Many  people 
were  indebted  to  him  for  his  kindly  services  in  the 
police  station  and  the  justice  courts,  for  in  those 
days  Irish  constituents  easily  broke  the  peace,  and 
before  the  establishment  of  the  Juvenile  Court, 
boys  were  arrested  for  very  trivial  offenses ;  added 


CIVIC   COOPERATION  317 

to  these  were  hundreds  of  constituents  indebted  to 
him  for  personal  kindness  from  the  peddler  who 
received  a  free  Hcense,  to  the  business  man  who 
had  a  railroad  pass  to  New  York.  Our  third  cam- 
paign against  him,  when  we  succeeded  in  making 
a  serious  impression  upon  his  majority,  evoked 
from  his  henchmen  the  same  sort  of  hostility  which 
a  striker  so  inevitably  feels  against  the  man  who 
would  take  his  job,  even  sharpened  by  the  sense 
that  the  movement  for  reform  came  from  an  alien 
source. 

Another  result  of  the  campaign  was  an  expecta- 
tion on  the  part  of  our  new  political  friends  that 
Hull-House  would  perform  like  offices  for  them, 
and  there  resulted  endless  confusion  and  mis- 
understanding because  in  many  cases  we  could 
not  even  attempt  to  do  what  the  alderman  con- 
stantly did  with  a  right  good  will.  When  he  pro- 
tected a  law  breaker  from  the  legal  consequences 
of  his  act,  his  kindness  appeared,  not  only  to  him- 
self but  to  all  beholders,  like  the  deed  of  a  powerful 
and  kindly  statesman.  When  Hull-House  on  the 
other  hand  insisted  that  a  law  must  be  enforced, 
it  could  but  appear  like  the  persecution  of  the 
offender.  We  were  certainly  not  anxious  for  con- 
sistency nor  for  individual  achievement,  but  in  a 
desire  to  foster  a  higher  political  morality  and  not 
to  lower  our  standards,  we  constantly  clashed  with 
the  existing  political  code.  We  also  unwittingly 
stumbled  upon  a  powerful  combination  of  which 


3i8     TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL- HOUSE 

our  alderman  was  the  political  head,  with  its  bank- 
ing, its  ecclesiastical,  and  its  journalistic  represent- 
atives, and  as  we  followed  up  the  clew  and  naively- 
told  all  we  discovered,  we  of  course  laid  the  foun- 
dations for  opposition  which  has  manifested  itself 
in  many  forms  ;  the  most  striking  expression  of  it 
was  an  attack  upon  Hull-House  lasting  through 
weeks  and  months  by  a  Chicago  daily  newspaper 
which  has  since  ceased  publication. 

During  the  third  campaign  I  received  many 
anonymous  letters  —  those  from  the  men  often 
obscene,  those  from  the  women  revealing  that 
curious  connection  between  prostitution  and  the 
lowest  type  of  politics  which  every  city  tries  in 
vain  to  hide.  I  had  offers  from  the  men  in  the 
city  prison  to  vote  properly  if  released ;  various 
communications  from  lodging-house  keepers  as  to 
the  prices  of  the  vote  they  were  ready  to  deliver; 
everywhere  appeared  that  animosity  which  is 
evoked  only  when  a  man  feels  that  his  means  of 
livelihood  is  threatened. 

As  I  look  back,  I  am  reminded  of  the  state  of 
mind  of  Kipling's  newspaper  men  who  witnessed  a 
volcanic  eruption  at  sea,  in  which  unbelievable 
deep-sea  creatures  were  expelled  to  the  surface, 
among  them  an  enormous  white  serpent,  blind 
and  smelling  of  musk,  whose  death  throes  thrashed 
the  sea  into  a  fury.  With  professional  instinct 
unimpaired,  the  journalists  carefully  observed  the 
uncanny  creature  never  designed  for   the  eyes  of 


CIVIC   COOPERATION  319 

men  ;  but  a  few  days  later,  when  they  found  them- 
selves in  a  comfortable  second-class  carriage, 
traveling  from  Southampton  to  London  between 
trim  hedgerows  and  smug  English  villages,  they 
concluded  that  the  experience  was  too  sensational 
to  be  put  before  the  British  public,  and  it  became 
improbable  even  to  themselves. 

Many  subsequent  years  of  living  in  kindly 
neighborhood  fashion  with  the  people  of  the 
nineteenth  w^ard,  has  produced  upon  my  memory 
the  soothing  effect  of  the  second-class  railroad 
carriage  and  many  of  these  political  experiences 
have  not  only  become  remote  but  already  seem 
improbable.  On  the  other  hand,  these  campaigns 
were  not  without  their  rewards  ;  one  of  them  was 
a  quickened  friendship  both  with  the  more  sub- 
stantial citizens  in  the  ward  and  with  a  group  of 
fine  young  voters  whose  devotion  to  Hull-House 
has  never  since  failed ;  another  was  a  sense  of 
identification  with  public-spirited  men  throughout 
the  city  who  contributed  money  and  time  to  what 
they  considered  a  gallant  effort  against  political 
corruption.  I  remember  a  young  professor  from 
the  University  of  Chicago  who  with  his  wife  came 
to  live  at  Hull-House,  traveling  the  long  distance 
every  day  throughout  the  autumn  and  winter  that 
he  might  qualify  as  a  nineteenth-ward  voter  in 
the  spring  campaign.  He  served  as  a  watcher  at 
the  polls  and  it  was  but  a  poor  reward  for  his 
devotion  that  he  was  literally  set  upon  and  beaten 


320    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

up,  for  in  those  good  old  days  such  things  fre- 
quently occurred.  Many  another  case  of  devotion 
to  our  standard  so  recklessly  raised  might  be 
cited  but  perhaps  more  valuable  than  any  of  these 
was  the  sense  of  identification  we  obtained  with 
the  rest  of  Chicago. 

So  far  as  a  Settlement  can  discern  and  bring  to 
local  consciousness  neighborhood  needs  which  are 
common  needs,  and  can  give  vigorous  help  to  the 
municipal  measures  through  which  such  needs 
shall  be  met,  it  fulfills  its  most  valuable  function. 
To  illustrate  from  our  first  effort  to  improve  the 
street  paving  in  the  vicinity,  we  found  that  when 
we  had  secured  the  consent  of  the  majority  of  the 
property  owners  on  a  given  street  for  a  new  paving, 
the  alderman  checked  the  entire  plan  through 
his  kindly  service  to  one  man  who  had  appealed  to 
him  to  keep  the  assessments  down.  The  street 
long  remained  a  shocking  mass  of  wet,  dilapidated 
cedar  blocks,  where  children  were  sometimes  mired, 
as  they  floated  a  surviving  block  in  the  water  which 
speedily  filled  the  holes  whence  other  blocks  had 
been  extracted  for  fuel.  And  yet  when  we  were 
able  to  demonstrate  that  the  street  paving  had 
thus  been  reduced  into  cedar  pulp  by  the  heavily 
loaded  wagons  of  an  adjacent  factory,  that  the 
expense  of  its  repaving  should  be  borne  from  a 
general  fund  and  not  by  the  poor  property  owners, 
we  found  that  we  could  all  unite  in  advocating 
reform  in  the  method  of  repaving  assessments,  and 


CIVIC  COOPERATION 


321 


the  alderman    himself   was  obliged   to  come  into 
such  a  popular  movement.     The  Nineteenth  Ward 


Improvement  Association  which  met  at  Hull-House 
dunng  two  winters,  was  the  first  body  of  citizens 


322    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

able  to  make  a  real  impression  upon  the  local 
paving  situation.  They  secured  an  expert  to 
watch  the  paving  as  it  went  down  to  be  sure  that 
their  half  of  the  paving  money  was  well  expended. 
In  the  belief  that  property  values  would  be  thus 
enhanced,  the  common  aim  brought  together  the 
more  prosperous  people  of  the  vicinity,  somewhat 
as  the  Hull-House  Cooperative  Coal  Association 
brought  together  the  poorer  ones. 

I  remember  that  during  the  second  campaign 
against  our  alderman,  Governor  Pingree  of  Michi- 
gan came  to  visit  at  Hull-House.  He  said  that 
the  stronghold  of  such  a  man  was  not  the  place 
in  which  to  start  municipal  regeneration ;  that 
good  aldermen  should  be  elected  from  the  promis- 
ing wards  first,  until  a  majority  of  honest  men  in 
the  city  council  should  make  politics  unprofitable 
for  corrupt  men.  We  replied  that  it  was  difficult 
to  divide  Chicago  into  good  and  bad  wards,  but 
that  a  new  organization  called  the  Municipal 
Voters'  League  was  attempting  to  give  to  the 
well-meaning  voter  in  every  ward  throughout  the 
city,  accurate  information  concerning  the  candi- 
dates and  their  relation,  past  and  present,  to  vital 
issues.  One  of  our  trustees  who  was  most  active 
in  inaugurating  this  League,  always  said  that  his 
nineteenth-ward  experience  had  convinced  him  of 
the  unity  of  city  politics,  and  that  he  constantly 
used  our  campaign  as  a  challenge  to  the  unaroused 
citizens  living  in  wards  less  conspicuously  corrupt. 


CIVIC   COOPERATION  323 

Certainly  the  need  for  civic  cooperation  was 
obvious  in  many  directions,  and  in  none  more 
strikingly  than  in  that  organized  effort  which  must 
be  carried  on  unceasingly  if  young  people  are  to 
be  protected  from  the  darker  and  coarser  dangers 
of  the  city.  The  cooperation  between  Hull-House 
and  the  Juvenile  Protective  Association  came 
about  gradually,  and  it  seems  now  almost  inevi- 
tably. From  our  earliest  days  we  saw  many  boys 
constantly  arrested,  and  I  had  a  number  of  most 
enlightening  experiences  in  the  police  station  with 
an  Irish  lad  whose  mother  upon  her  deathbed 
had  begged  me  "to  look  after  him."  We  were 
distressed  by  the  gangs  of  very  little  boys  who 
would  sally  forth  with  an  enterprising  leader  in 
search  of  old  brass  and  iron,  sometimes  breaking 
into  empty  houses  for  the  sake  of  the  faucets  or 
lead  pipe  which  they  would  sell  for  a  good  price 
to  a  junk  dealer.  With  the  money  thus  obtained 
they  would  buy  cigarettes  and  beer  or  even  candy, 
which  could  be  conspicuously  consumed  in  the 
alleys  where  they  might  enjoy  the  excitement  of 
being  seen  and  suspected  by  the  ''coppers." 
From  the  third  year  of  Hull-House,  one  of  the 
residents  held  a  semi-official  position  in  the  nearest 
police  station,  at  least  the  sergeant  agreed  to  give 
her  provisional  charge  of  every  boy  and  girl  under 
arrest  for  a  trivial  offense. 

Mrs.  Stevens,  w^ho  performed  this  work  for 
several  years,  became  the  first  probation  officer  of 


324    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

the  Juvenile  Court  when  It  was  established  In 
Cook  County 'In  1899.  She  was  the  sole  proba- 
tion officer  at  first,  but  at  the  time  of  her  death, 
which  occurred  at  Hull-House  In  1900,  she  was 
the  senior  officer  of  a  corps  of  six.  Her  entire 
experience  had  fitted  her  to  deal  wisely  with  way- 
ward children.  She  had  gone  into  a  New  England 
cotton  mill  at  the  age  of  thirteen,  where  she  had 
promptly  lost  the  index  finger  of  her  right  hand 
through  "carelessness"  she  was  told,  and  no  one 
then  seemed  to  understand  that  freedom  from  care 
was  "the  prerogative  of  childhood.  Later  she  be- 
came a  typesetter  and  was  one  of  the  first  women 
in  America  to  become  a  member  of  the  typo- 
graphical union,  retaining  her  "card"  through  all 
the  later  years  of  editorial  work.  As  the  Juvenile 
Court  developed,  the  committee  of  public-spirited 
citizens  who  first  supplied  only  Mrs.  Stevens' 
salary,  later  maintained  a  corps  of  twenty-two 
such  officers ;  several  of  these  were  Hull-House 
residents  who  brought  to  the  house  for  many 
years  a  sad  little  procession  of  children  struggling 
against  all  sorts  of  handicaps.  When  legislation 
was  secured  which  placed  the  probation  officers 
upon  the  pay  roll  of  the  county,  It  was  a  challenge 
to  the  efficiency  of  the  civil  service  method  of 
appointment  to  obtain  by  examination,  men  and 
women  fitted  for  this  delicate  human  task.  As  one 
of  five  people  asked  by  the  civil  service  commission 
to   conduct   this    first   examination  for  probation 


CIVIC  COOPERATION  325 

officers,  I  became  convinced  that  we  were  but  at 
the  beginning  of  the  nonpoHtical  method  of  select- 
ing public  servants,  but  even  stiff  and  unbending 
as  the  examination  may  be,  it  is  still  our  hope  of 
political  salvation. 

In  1907  the  Juvenile  Court  was  housed  in  a 
model  court  building  of  its  own,  containing  a 
detention  home  and  equipped  with  a  competent 
staff.  The  committee  of  citizens  largely  respon- 
sible for  this  result,  thereupon  turned  their  atten- 
tion to  the  conditions  which  the  records  of  the 
court  indicated  had  led  to  the  alarming  amount 
of  juvenile  delinquency  and  crime.  They  organ- 
ized the  Juvenile  Protective  Association,  whose 
twenty-two  officers  meet  weekly  at  Hull-House 
with  their  executive  committee  to  report  what 
they  have  found  and  to  discuss  city  conditions 
affecting  the  lives  of  children  and  young  people. 

The  association  discovers  that  there  are  certain 
temptations  into  which  children  so  habitually  fall 
that  it  is  evident  that  the  average  child  cannot 
withstand  them.  An  overwhelming  mass  of  data 
is  accumulated  showing  the  need  of  enforcing 
existing  legislation  and  of  securing  new  legislation, 
but  it  also  indicates  a  hundred  other  directions  in 
which  the  young  people  who  so  gayly  walk  our 
streets,  often  to  their  own  destruction,  need  safe- 
guarding and  protection. 

The  effort  of  the  association  to  treat  the  youth 
of  the  city  with  consideration  and  understanding, 


326    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

has  rallied  the  most  unexpected  forces  to  its 
standard.  Quite  as  the  basic  needs  of  life  are 
supplied  solely  by  those  who  make  money  out  of 
the  business,  so  the  modern  city  has  assumed 
that  the  craving  for  pleasure  must  be  ministered 
to  only  by  the  sordid.  This  assumption,  however, 
in  a  large  measure  broke  down  as  soon  as  the 
Juvenile  Protective  Association  courageously  put 
it  to  the  test.  After  persistent  prosecutions,  but 
also  after  many  friendly  interviews,  the  Druggists' 
Association  itself  prosecutes  those  of  its  members 
who  sell  indecent  postal  cards  ;  the  Saloon  Keep- 
ers' Protective  Association  not  only  declines  to 
protect  members  who  sell  liquor  to  minors,  but 
now  takes  drastic  action  to  prevent  such  sales  ;  the 
Retail  Grocers'  Association  forbids  the  selling  of 
tobacco  to  minors  ;  the  Association  of  Department 
Store  Managers  not  only  increased  the  vigilance  in 
their  waiting  rooms  by  supplying  more  matrons, 
but  as  a  body  they  have  become  regular  tontribu- 
tors  to  the  association ;  the  special  watchmen  in 
all  the  railroad  yards  agree  not  to  arrest  trespass- 
ing boys  but  to  report  them  to  the  association  ;  the 
firms  manufacturing  moving  picture  films  not  only 
submit  their  films  to  a  volunteer  inspection  com- 
mittee, but  ask  for  suggestions  in  regard  to  new 
matter;  and  the  Five-Cent  Theaters  arrange  for 
''stunts"  which  shall  deal  with  the  subject  of 
public  health  and  morals  when  the  lecturers  pro- 
vided are  entertaining  as  well  as  instructive. 


CIVIC   COOPERATION  327 

It  is  not  difficult  to  arouse  the  Impulse  of  pro- 
tection for  the  young,  which  would  doubtless  dic- 
tate the  dally  acts  of  many  a  bartender  and  pool- 
room keeper  if  they  could  only  indulge  it  without 
thereby  giving  their  rivals  an  advantage.  When 
this  difficulty  is  removed  by  an  even-handed  en- 
forcement of  the  law,  that  simple  kindliness  which 
the  innocent  always  evoke  goes  from  one  to 
another  like  a  slowly  spreading  flame  of  good  will. 
Doubtless  the  most  rewarding  experience  in  any 
such  undertaking  as  that  of  the  Juvenile  Protective 
Association,  Is  the  warm  and  intelligent  coopera- 
tion coming  from  unexpected  sources  —  official  and 
commercial  as  well  as  philanthropic.  Upon  the 
suggestion  of  the  association,  social  centers  have 
been  opened  in  various  parts  of  the  city,  disused 
buildings  turned  into  recreation  rooms,  vacant  lots 
made  into  gardens,  hiking  parties  organized  for 
country  excursions,  bathing  beaches  established  on^ 
the  lake  front,  and  public  schools  opened  for  social 
purposes.  Through  the  efforts  of  public-spirited 
citizens  a  medical  clinic  and  a  Psychopathic  In- 
stitute have  become  associated  with  the  Juvenile 
Court  of  Chicago,  in  addition  to  which  an  exhaus- 
tive study  of  court-records  has  just  been  completed. 
To  this  carefully  collected  data  concerning  the 
abnormal  child,  the  Juvenile  Protective  Association 
hopes  in  time  to  add  knowledge  of  the  normal  child 
who  lives  under  the  most  adverse  city  conditions. 

It  was  not  without  hope  that  I  might  be  able 


328    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

to  forward  in  the  public  school  system  the  solu- 
tion of  some  of  these  problems  of  delinquency  so 
dependent  upon  truancy  and  ill-adapted  educa- 
tion, that  I  became  a  member  of  the  Chicago 
Board  of  Education  in  July,  1905.  It  is  impossi- 
ble to  write  of  the  situation  as  it  became  drama- 
tized in  half  a  dozen  strong  personalities,  but  the 
entire  experience  was  so  illuminating  as  to  the 
difficulties  and  limitations  of  democratic  govern- 
ment, that  it  would  be  unfair  in  a  chapter  on  Civic 
Cooperation  not  to  attempt  an  outline. 

Even  the  briefest  statement,  however,  necessi- 
tates a  review  of  the  preceding  few  years.  For  a 
decade  the  Chicago  school  teachers,  or  rather  a 
majority  of  them  who  were  organized  into  the 
Teachers'  Federation,  had  been  engaged  in  a 
conflict  with  the  Board  of  Education  both  for 
more  adequate  salaries  and  for  more  self-direction 
in  the  conduct  of  the  schools.  In  pursuance  of 
the  first  object,  they  had  attacked  the  tax  dodger 
along  the  entire  line  of  his  defense,  from  the  curb- 
stone to  the  Supreme  Court.  They  began  with 
an  intricate  investigation  which  uncovered  the 
fact  that  in  1899,  $235,000,000  of  value  of  public 
utility  corporations  paid  nothing  in  taxes.  The 
Teachers'  Federation  brought  a  suit  which  was 
prosecuted  through  the  Supreme  Court  of  Illinois 
and  resulted  in  an  order  entered  against  the  State 
Board  of  Equalization,  demanding  that  it  tax  the 
corporations   mentioned  in   the  bill.     In   spite  of 


CIVIC   COOPERATION  329 

the  fact  that  the  defendant  companies  sought 
federal  aid  and  obtained  an  order  which  restrained 
the  payment  of  a  portion  of  the  tax,  each  year 
since  1900,  the  Chicago  Board  of  Education  has 
benefited  to  the  extent  of  more  than  a  quarter 
of  a  milHon  dollars.  Although  this  result  had 
been  attained  through  the  unaided  efforts  of  the 
teachers,  to  their  surprise  and  indignation  their 
salaries  were  not  increased.  The  Teachers'  Fed- 
eration, therefore,  brought  a  suit  against  the 
Board  of  Education  for  the  advance  which  had 
been  promised  them  three  years  earlier  but  never 
paid.  The  decision  of  the  lower  court  was  in 
their  favor  but  the  Board  of  Education  appealed 
the  case,  and  this  was  the  situation  when  the 
seven  new  members  appointed  by  Mayor  Dunne 
in  1905  took  their  seats.  The  conservative  public 
suspected  that  these  new  members  were  merely 
representatives  of  the  Teachers'  Federation.  This 
opinion  was  founded  upon  the  fact  that  Judge 
Dunne  had  rendered  a  favorable  decision  in  the 
teachers'  suit  and  that  the  teachers  had  been  very 
active  in  the  campaign  which  had  resulted  in  his 
election  as  mayor  of  the  city.  It  seemed  obvious 
that  the  teachers  had  entered  into  politics  for  the 
sake  of  securing  their  own  representatives  on  the 
Board  of  Education.  These  suspicions  were,  of 
course,  only  confirmed  when  the  new  board  voted 
to  withdraw  the  suit  of  their  predecessors  from  the 
Appellate  Court  and  to  act  upon  the  decision  of 


330    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

the  lower  court.  The  teachers,  on  the  other  hand, 
defended  their  long  effort  in  the  courts,  the  State 
Board  of  Equalization,  and  the  Legislature,  against 
the  charge  of  "dragging  the  schools  into  politics," 
and  declared  that  the  exposure  of  the  indifference 
and  cupidity  of  the  politicians  was  a  well-deserved 
rebuke,  and  that  it  was  the  politicians  who  had 
brought  the  schools  to  the  verge  of  financial  ruin ; 
they  further  insisted  that  the  levy  and  collection 
of  taxes,  tenure  of  office,  and  pensions  to  civil  serv- 
ants in  Chicago  were  all  entangled  with  the  trac- 
tion situation,  which  in  their  minds  at  least  had 
come  to  be  an  example  of  the  struggle  between  the 
democratic  and  plutocratic  administration  of  city 
affairs.  The  new  appointees  to  the  School  Board 
represented  no  concerted  policy  of  any  kind,  but 
were  for  the  most  part  adherents  to  the  new 
education.  The  teachers,  confident  that  their 
cause  was  identical  with  the  principles  advocated 
by  such  educators  as  Colonel  Parker,  were  there- 
fore sure  that  the  plans  of  the  "new  education" 
members  would  of  necessity  coincide  with  the  plans 
of  the  Teachers'  Federation.  In  one  sense  the 
situation  was  an  epitome  of  Mayor  Dunne's  entire 
administration,  which  was  founded  upon  the  belief 
that  if  those  citizens  representing  social  ideals 
and  reform  principles  were  but  appointed  to 
office,  public  welfare  must  be  established. 

During  my  tenure  of  office  I  many  times  talked 
to  the  officers  of  the  Teachers'  Federation,  but  I 


CIVIC   COOPERATION  331 

was  seldom  able  to  follow  their  suggestions  and, 
although  I  gladly  cooperated  in  their  plans  for  a 
better  pension  system  and  other  matters,  only 
once  did  I  try  to  influence  the  policy  of  the  Fed- 
eration. When  the  withheld  salaries  were  finally 
paid  to  the  representatives  of  the  Federation  who 
had  brought  suit  and  were  divided  among  the 
members  who  had  suffered  both  financially  and 
professionally  during  this  long  legal  struggle,  I  was 
most  anxious  that  the  division  should  voluntarily  be 
extended  to  all  of  the  teachers  who  had  experienced 
a  loss  of  salary  although  they  were  not  members 
of  the  Federation.  It  seemed  to  me  a  striking 
opportunity  to  refute  the  charge  that  the  Federa- 
tion was  self-seeking  and  to  put  the  whole  long 
effort  in  the  minds  of  the  public,  exactly  where 
it  belonged,  as  one  of  devoted  public  service. 
But  it  was  doubtless  much  easier  for  me  to  urge 
this  altruistic  policy  than  it  was  for  those  who 
had  borne  the  heat  and  burden  of  the  day,  to  act 
upon  it. 

The  second  object  of  the  Teachers'  Federation 
also  entailed  much  stress  and  storm.  At  the 
time  of  the  financial  stringency,  and  largely  as  a 
result  of  it,  the  Board  had  made  the  first  sub- 
stantial advance  in  -a  teacher's  salary  dependent 
upon  a  so-called  promotional  examination,  half 
of  which  was  upon  academic  subjects  entailing  a 
long  and  severe  preparation.  The  teachers  re- 
sented this  upon  two  lines  of  argument  :    first,  that 


332    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

the  scheme  was  unprofessional  in  that  the  teacher 
was  advanced  on  her  capacity  as  a  student  rather 
than  on  her  professional  ability ;  and,  second, 
that  it  added  an  intolerable  and  unnecessary 
burden  to  her  already  overfull  day.  The  ad- 
ministration, on  the  other  hand,  contended  with 
much  justice  that  there  was  a  constant  danger  in 
a  great  public  school  system  that  teachers  lose 
pliancy  and  the  open  mind,  and  that  many  of 
them  had  obviously  grown  mechanical  and  indiffer- 
ent. The  conservative  public  approved  the  pro- 
motional examinations  as  the  symbol  of  an  advanc- 
ing educational  standard,  and  their  sympathy  with 
the  superintendent  was  increased  because  they 
continually  resented  the  affiliation  of  the  Teachers' 
Federation  with  the  Chicago  Federation  of  Labor 
which  had  taken  place  several  years  before  the 
election  of  Mayor  Dunne  on  his  traction  platform. 
This  much  talked  of  affiliation  between  the  teach- 
ers and  the  trades-unionists  had  been,  at  least 
in  the  first  instance,  but  one  more  tactic  in  the 
long  struggle  against  the  tax-dodging  corporations. 
The  Teachers'  Federation  had  won  in  their  first 
skirmish  against  that  public  indifference  which  is 
generated  in  the  accumulation  of  wealth  and 
which  has  for  its  nucleus  successful  commercial 
men.  When  they  found  themselves  in  need  of 
further  legislation  to  keep  the  offending  corpora- 
tions under  control,  they  naturally  turned  for 
political  influence  and  votes  to  the  organization 


CIVIC  COOPERATION  333 

representing  worklngmen.  The  affiliation  had  none 
of  the  sinister  meaning  so  often  attached  to  it. 
The  Teachers'  Federation  never  obtained  a  charter 
from  the  American  Federation  of  Labor  and  its 
main  interest  always  centered  in  the  legislative 
committee. 

And  yet  this  statement  of  the  difference  be- 
tween the  majority  of  the  grade  school  teachers 
and  the  Chicago  School  Board  is  totally  inade- 
quate, for  the  difficulties  were  stubborn  and  lay 
far  back  in  the  long  effort  of  public  school  ad- 
ministration in  America  to  free  itself  from  the 
rule  and  exploitation  of  politics.  In  every  city 
for  many  years  the  politician  had  secured  positions 
for  his  friends  as  teachers  and  janitors ;  he  had 
received  a  rake-off  in  the  contract  for  every  new 
building  or  coal  supply  or  adoption  of  school- 
books.  In  the  long  struggle  against  this  po- 
litical corruption,  the  one  remedy  continually 
advocated  was  the  transfer  of  authority  in  all 
educational  matters  from  the  Board  to  the  super- 
intendent. The  one  cure  for  "pull"  and  corrup- 
tion was  the  authority  of  the  "expert."  The 
rules  and  records  of  the  Chicago  Board  of  Educa- 
tion are  full  of  relics  of  this  long  struggle  honestly 
waged  by  honest  men,  who  unfortunately  became 
content  with  the  ideals  of  an  "efficient  business 
administration."  These  business  men  established 
an  able  superintendent  with  a  large  salary,  with 
his  tenure  of  office  secured  by  State  law  so  that 


334    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

he  would  not  be  disturbed  by  the  wrath  of  the 
balked  politician.  They  instituted  impersonal  ex- 
aminations for  the  teachers  both  as  to  entrance 
into  the  system  and  promotion,  and  they  pro- 
ceeded ''to  hold  the  superintendent  responsible" 
for  smooth-running  schools.  All  this  however 
dangerously  approximated  the  commercialistic 
ideal  of  high  salaries  only  for  the  management 
with  the  final  test  of  a  small  expense  account  and 
a  large  output. 

In  this  long  struggle  for  a  quarter  of  a  century  to 
free  the  public  schools  from  political  interference, 
in  Chicago  at  least,  the  high  wall  of  defense 
erected  around  the  school  system  in  order  ''to  keep 
the  rascals  out,"  unfortunately  so  restricted  the 
teachers  inside  the  system  that  they  had  no  space 
in  which  to  move  about  freely  and  the  more  adven- 
turous of  them  fairly  panted  for  light  and  air. 
Any  attempt  to  lower  the  wall  for  the  sake  of  the 
teachers  within,  was  regarded  as  giving  an  oppor- 
tunity to  the  politicians  without,  and  they  were 
often  openly  accused,  with  a  show  of  truth,  of 
being  in  league  with  each  other.  Whenever  the 
Dunne  members  of  the  Board  attempted  to  secure 
more  liberty  for  the  teachers,  we  were  warned  by 
tales  of  former  difficulties  with  the  politicians,  and 
it  seemed  impossible  that  the  struggle  so  long  the 
focus  of  attention,  should  recede  into  the  dullness 
of  the  achieved  and  allow  the  energy  of  the  Board 
to  be  free  for  new  effort. 


CIVIC   COOPERATION  335 

The  whole  situation  between  the  superintendent 
supported  by  a  majority  of  the  Board,  and  the 
Teachers'  Federation  had  become  an  epitome  of 
the  struggle  between  efficiency  and  democracy ; 
on  one  side  a  well-intentioned  expression  of  the 
bureaucracy  necessary  in  a  large  system  but 
which  under  pressure  had  become  unnecessarily 
self-assertive,  and  on  the  other  side  a  fairly  mili- 
tant demand  for  self-government  made  in  the 
name  of  freedom.  Both  sides  inevitably  exagger- 
ated the  difficulties  of  the  situation  and  both  felt 
that  they  were  standing  by  important  principles. 

I  certainly  played  a  most  inglorious  part  in 
this  unnecessary  conflict ;  I  was  chairman  of  the 
School  Management  Committee  during  one  year 
when  a  majority  of  the  members  seemed  to  me 
exasperatingly  conservative,  and  during  another 
year  when  they  were  frustratingly  radical,  and  I 
was  of  course  highly  unsatisfactory  to  both.  Cer- 
tainly a  plan  to  retain  the  undoubted  benefit  of  re- 
quired study  for  teachers  in  such  wise  as  to  lessen 
its  burden,  and  various  schemes  devised  to  shift 
the  emphasis  from  scholarship  to  professional  work, 
were  most  Impatiently  repudiated  by  the  Teachers' 
Federation,  and  when  one  badly  mutilated  plan 
finally  passed  the  Board,  it  was  most  reluctantly 
administered  by  the  superintendent. 

I  at  least  became  convinced  that  partisans 
would  never  tolerate  the  use  of  stepping-stones. 
They  are  much  too  impatient  to  look  on  while 


336    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

their  beloved  scheme  is  unstably  balanced,  and 
they  would  rather  see  it  tumble  into  the  stream 
at  once  than  to  have  it  brought  to  dry  land  in 
any  such  half-hearted  fashion.  Before  my  School 
Board  experience,  I  thought  that  life  had  taught 
me  at  least  one  hard-earned  lesson,  that  existing 
arrangements  and  the  hoped  for  improvements 
must  be  mediated  and  reconciled  to  each  other, 
that  the  new  must  be  dovetailed  into  the  old  as 
it  were,  if  it  were  to  endure ;  but  on  the  School 
Board  I  discerned  that  all  such  efforts  were  looked 
upon  as  compromising  and  unworthy,  by  both  par- 
tisans. In  the  general  disorder  and  public  excite- 
ment resulting  from  the  illegal  dismissal  of  a 
majority  of  the  *' Dunne"  board  and  their  re- 
instatement by  a  court  decision,  I  found  myself 
belonging  to  neither  party.  During  the  months 
following  the  upheaval  and  the  loss  of  my  most 
vigorous  colleagues,  under  the  regime  of  men  rep- 
resenting the  leading  Commercial  Club  of  the  city 
who  honestly  believed  that  they  were  rescuing  the 
schools  from  a  condition  of  chaos,  I  saw  one  be- 
loved measure  after  another  withdrawn.  Although 
the  new  president  scrupulously  gave  me  the  floor 
in  the  defense  of  each,  it  was  impossible  to  con- 
sider them  upon  their  merits  in  the  lurid  light  which 
at  the  moment  enveloped  all  the  plans  of  the 
"uplifters."  Thus  the  building  of  smaller  school- 
rooms, such  as  in  New  York  mechanically  avoid 
overcrowding;  the  extension  of  the  truant  rooms 


CIVIC  COOPERATION  337 

so  successfully  inaugurated,  the  multiplication  of 
school  playgrounds  and  many  another  cherished 
plan  was  thrown  out  or  at  least  indefinitely  post- 
poned. 

The  final  discrediting  of  Mayor  Dunne's  ap- 
pointees to  the  School  Board  aflPords  a  very  in- 
teresting study  in  social  psychology ; .  the  news- 
papers had  so  constantly  reflected  and  intensified 
the  ideals  of  a  business  Board,  and  had  so  per- 
sistently ridiculed  various  administration  plans  for 
the  municipal  ownership  of  street  railways,  that 
from  the  beginning  any  attempt  the  new  Board 
made  to  discuss  educational  matters,  only  excited 
their  derision  and  contempt.  Some  of  these  dis- 
cussions were  lengthy  and  disorderly  and  deserved 
the  discipline  of  ridicule,  but  others  which  were 
well  conducted  and  in  which  educational  problems 
were  seriously  set  forth  by  men  of  authority,  were 
ridiculed  quite  as  sharply.  I  recall  the  surprise 
and  indignation  of  a  University  professor  who  had 
consented  to  speak  at  a  meeting  arranged  in  the 
Board  rooms,  when  next  morning  his  nonpartisan 
and  careful  disquisition  had  been  twisted  into  the 
most  arrant  uplift  nonsense  and  so  connected 
with  a  fake  newspaper  report  of  a  trial  marriage 
address  delivered,  not  by  himself,  but  by  a  col- 
league, that  a  leading  clergyman  of  the  city,  having 
read  the  newspaper  account,  felt  impelled  to  preach 
a  sermon,  calling  upon  all  decent  people  to  rally 
against  the  doctrines  which  were  being  taught  to 


338    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

the  children  by  an  immoral  School  Board.  As 
the  bewildered  professor  had  lectured  in  response 
to  my  invitation,  I  endeavored  to  find  the  animus 
of  the  complication,  but  neither  from  editor  in  chief 
nor  from  the  reporter  could  I  discover  anything 
more  sinister  than  that  the  public  expected  a  good 
story  out  of  these  School  Board  "talk  fests,"  and 
that  any  man  who  even  momentarily  allied  him- 
self with  a  radical  administration,  must  expect  to 
be  ridiculed  by  those  papers  which  considered  the 
traction  policy  of  the  administration  both  foolish 
arid  dangerous. 

As  I  myself  was  treated  with  uniform  courtesy 
by  the  leading  papers,  I  may  perhaps  here  record 
my  discouragement  over  this  complicated  diffi- 
culty of  open  discussion,  for  democratic  govern- 
ment is  founded  upon  the  assumption  that  differ- 
ing policies  shall  be  freely  discussed  and  that 
each  party  shall  have  an  opportunity  for  at  least 
a  partisan  presentation  of  its  contentions.  This 
attitude  of  the  newspapers  was  doubtless  intensi- 
fied because  the  Dunne  School  Board  had  insti- 
tuted a  lawsuit  challenging  the  validity  of  the  lease 
for  the  school  ground  occupied  by  a  newspaper 
building.  This  suit  has  since  been  decided  in  favor 
of  the  newspaper,  and  it  may  be  that  in  their 
resentment  they  felt  justified  in  doing  everything 
possible  to  minimize  the  prosecuting  School  Board. 
I  am,  however,  inclined  to  think  that  the  news- 
papers but  reflected  an  opinion  honestly  held  by 


CIVIC   COOPERATION  339 

many  people,  and  that  their  constant  and  partisan 
presentation  of  this  opinion  clearly  demonstrates 
one  of  the  greatest  difficulties  of  governmental  ad- 
ministration in  a  city  grown  too  large  for  verbal 
discussions  of  public  affairs. 

It  is  difficult  to  close  this  chapter  without  a 
reference  to  the  efforts  made  in  Chicago  to  secure 
the  municipal  franchise  for  women.  During  two 
long  periods  of  agitation  for  a  new  city  charter, 
a  representative  body  of  w^omen  appealed  to  the 
public,  to  the  charter  convention,  and  to  the 
Illinois  legislature  for  this  very  reasonable  pro- 
vision. During  the  campaign  when  I  acted  as 
chairman  of  the  federation  of  a  hundred  women's 
organizations,  nothing  impressed  me  so  forcibly  as 
the  fact  that  the  response  came  from  bodies  of 
women  representing  the  most  varied  traditions. 
We  were  joined  by  a  church  society  of  hundreds  of 
Lutheran  women,  because  Scandinavian  women 
had  exercised  the  municipal  franchise  since  the 
seventeenth  century  and  had  found  American 
cities  strangely  conservative ;  by  organizations  of 
working  women  who  had  keenly  felt  the  need  of 
the  municipal  franchise  in  order  to  secure  for  their 
workshops  the  most  rudimentary  sanitation  and 
the  consideration  which  the  vote  alone  obtains  for 
workingmen  ;  by  federations  of  mothers'  meetings, 
who  were  interested  in  clean  milk  and  the  extension 
of  kindergartens ;  by  property-owning  women,  who 
had  been  powerless  to  protest  against  unjust  taxa- 


340    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

tlon ;  by  organizations  of  professional  women,  of 
university  students  and  of  collegiate  alumnae ;  and 
by  women's  clubs  interested  in  municipal  reforms. 
There  was  a  complete  absence  of  the  traditional 
women's  rights  clamor,  but  much  impressive  testi- 
mony from  busy  and  useful  women  that  they  had 
reached  the  place  where  they  needed  the  franchise 
in  order  to  carry  on  their  own  affairs.  A  striking 
witness  as  to  the  need  of  the  ballot,  even  for  the 
women  who  are  restricted  to  the  most  primitive  and 
traditional  activities,  occurred  when  some  Russian 
women  waited  upon  me  to  ask  whether,  under  the 
new  charter,  they  could  vote  for  covered  markets 
and  so  get  rid  of  the  shocking  Chicago  grime  upon 
all  their  food ;  and  when  some  neighboring  Italian 
women  sent  me  word  that  they  would  certainly 
vote  for  public  washhouses  if  they  ever  had  the 
chance  to  vote  at  all.  '  It  was  all  so  human,  so 
spontaneous  and  so  direct  that  it  really  seemed 
as  if  the  time  must  be  ripe  for  political  expression 
of  that  public  concern  on  the  part  of  women 
which  has  so  long  been  forced  to  seek  indirection. 
None  of  these  busy  women  wished  to  take  the 
place  of  men  nor  to  influence  them  in  the  direction 
of  men's  affairs,  but  they  did  seek  an  opportunity 
to  cooperate  directly  in  civic  life  through  the  use 
of  the  ballot  in  regard  to  their  own  affairs. 

A  Municipal  Museum  which  was  established  in 
the  Chicago  public  library  building  several  years 
ago,   largely  through   the  activity  of   a  group   of 


CIVIC  COOPERATION  341 

women  who  had  served  as  jurors  in  the  departments 
of  social  economy,  of  education  and  of  sanitation 
in  the  World's  Fair  at  St.  Louis,  showed  nothing 
more  clearly  than  that  it  is  impossible  to  divide 
any  of  these  departments  from  the  political  life 
of  the  modern  city  which  is  constantly  forced  to 
enlarge  the  boundary  of  its  activity. 


CHAPTER  XV 

The  Value  of  Social  Clubs 

From  the  early  days  at  Hull-House,  social  clubs 
composed  of  English  speaking  American  born 
young  people  grew  apace.  So  eager  were  the}^  for 
social  life  that  no  mistakes  in  management  could 
drive  them  away.  I  remember  one  enthusiastic 
leader  who  read  aloud  to  a  club  a  translation  of 
*' Antigone,"  which  she  had  selected  because  she 
believed  that  the  great  themes  of  the  Greek  poets 
were  best  suited  to  young  people.  She  came  into 
the  club  room  one  evening  in  time  to  hear  the 
president  call  the  restive  members  to  order  with 
the  statement,  ''You  might  just  as  well  keep 
quiet  for  she  is  bound  to  finish  it,  and  the  quicker 
she  gets  to  reading,  the  longer  time  we'll  have  for 
dancing."  And  yet  the  same  club  leader  had  the 
pleasure  of  lending  four  copies  of  the  drama  to 
four  of  the  members,  and  one  young  man  almost 
literally  committed  the  entire  play  to  memory. 

On  the  whole  we  were  much  impressed  by  the 
great  desire  for  self-improvement,  for  study  and 
debate,  exhibited  by  many  of  the  young  men. 
This  very  tendency,  in  fact,  brought  one  of  the 
most  promising  of  our  earlier  clubs  to  an  untimely 

342 


THE   VALUE   OF   SOCIAL   CLUBS     343 

end.  The  young  men  in  the  club,  twenty  in  num- 
ber, had  grown  much  irritated  by  the  frivoHty  of 
the  girls  during  their  long  debates,  and  had  finally 
proposed  that  three  of  the  most  ''frivolous"  be 
expelled.  Pending  a  final  vote,  the  three  culprits 
appealed  to  certain  of  their  friends  who  were 
members  of  the  Hull-House  Men's  Club,  between 
whom  and  the  debating  young  men  the  incident 
became  the  cause  of  a  quarrel  so  bitter  that  at 
length  it  led  to  a  shooting.  Fortunately  the  shot 
missed  fire,  or  it  may  have  been  true  that  it  was 
''only  intended  for  a  scare,"  but  at  any  rate,  we 
were  all  thoroughly  frightened  by  this  manifesta- 
tion of  the  hot  blood  which  the  defense  of  woman 
has  so  often  evoked.  After  many  efforts  to  bring 
about  a  reconciliation,  the  debating  club  of  twenty 
young  men  and  the  seventeen  young  women,  who 
either  were  or  pretended  to  be  sober  minded, 
rented  a  hall  a  mile  west  of  Hull-House  severing 
their  connection  with  us  because  their  ambitious 
and  right-minded  efforts  had  been  unappreciated, 
basing  this  on  the  ground  that  we  had  not  urged 
the  expulsion  of  the  so-called  "tough"  members 
of  the  Men's  Club,  who  had  been  involved  in  the 
difficulty.  The  seceding  club  invited  me  to  the 
first  meeting  in  their  new  quarters  that  I  might 
present  to  them  my  version  of  the  situation  and 
set  forth  the  incident  from  the  standpoint  of 
Hull-House.  The  discussion  I  had  with  the  young 
people  that  evening  has  always  remained  with  me 


344    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

as  one  of  the  moments  of  illumination  which  life  in 
a  Settlement  so  often  affords.  In  response  to  my 
position  that  a  desire  to  avoid  all  that  was  ''tough" 
meant  to  walk  only  in  the  paths  of  smug 
self-seeking  and  personal  improvement  leading 
straight  into  the  pit  of  self-righteousness  and  petty 
achievement  and  was  exactly  what  the  Settlement 
did  not  stand  for,  they  contended  with  much 
justice  that  ambitious  young  people  were  obliged 
for  their  own  reputation,  if  not  for  their  own 
morals,  to  avoid  all  connection  with  that  which 
bordered  on  the  tough,  and  that  it  was  quite 
another  matter  for  the  Hull-House  residents  who 
could  afford  a  more  generous  judgment.  It  was 
in  vain  I  urged  that  life  teaches  us  nothing  more 
inevitably  than  that  right  and  wrong  are  most 
confusingly  confounded ;  that  the  blackest  wrong 
may  be  within  our  own  motives,  and  that  at  the 
best,  right  will  not  dazzle  us  by  its  radiant  shin- 
ing, and  can  only  be  found  by  exerting  patience 
and  discrimination.  They  still  maintained  their 
wholesome  bourgeois  position,  which  I  am  now 
quite  ready  to  admit  was  most  reasonable. 

Of  course  there  were  many  disappointments 
connected  with  these  clubs  when  the  rewards  of 
political  and  commercial  life  easily  drew  the  mem- 
bers away  from  the  principles  advocated  in  club 
meetings.  One  of  the  young  men  who  had  been 
a  shining  light  in  the  advocacy  of  municipal  re- 
form, deserted  in  the  middle  of  a  reform  campaign 


THE  VALUE  OF   SOCIAL   CLUBS     345 

because  he  had  been  offered  a  lucrative  office  in 
the  city  hall ;  another  even  after  a  course  of  lec- 
tures on  business  morality,  "worked"  the  club 
itself  to  secure  orders  for  custom-made  clothing 
from  samples  of  cloth  he  displayed,  although  the 
orders  were  filled  by  ready-made  suits  slightly  re- 
fitted and  delivered  at  double  their  original  price. 
But  nevertheless,  there  was  much  to  cheer  us  as 
we  gradually  became  acquainted  with  the  daily 
living  of  the  vigorous  young  men  and  women  who 
filled  to  overflowing  all  the  social  clubs. 

We  have  been  much  impressed  during  our 
twenty  years,  by  the  ready  adaptation  of  city 
young  people  to  the  prosperity  arising  from  their 
own  increased  wages  or  from  the  commercial 
success  of  their  families.  This  quick  adaptability 
is  the  great  gift  of  the  city  child,  his  one  reward 
for  the  hurried  changing  life  which  he  has  always 
led.  The  working  girl  has  a  distinct  advantage  in 
the  task  of  transforming  her  whole  family  into  the 
ways  and  connections  of  the  prosperous  when  she 
works  down  town  and  becomes  conversant  with 
the  manners  and  conditions  of  a  cosmopolitan 
community.  Therefore  having  lived  in  a  Settle- 
ment twenty  years,  I  see  scores  of  young  people 
who  have  successfully  established  themselves  in 
life,  and  in  my  travels  in  the  city  and  outside,  I 
am  constantly  cheered  by  greetings  from  the  rising 
young  lawyer,  the  scholarly  rabbi,  the  successful 
teacher,    the    prosperous    young    matron    buying 


346    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 


clothes  for  her  blooming  children.  ''Don't  you 
remember  me  ?  I  used  to  belong  to  a  Hull-House 
club."  I  once  asked  one  of  these  young  people, 
a  man  who  held  a  good  position  on  a  Chicago 
daily,  what  special  thing  Hull-House  had  meant 
to  him,  and  he  promptly  replied, 
''It  was  the  first  house  I  had 
ever  been  in  where  books  and 
magazines  just  lay  around  as  if 
there  were  plenty  of  them  in  the 
world.  Don't  you  remember 
how  much  I  used 
ILtc.-  to  read  at  that 
little  round  table 
at  the  back  of  the 
library.^  To  have 
people  regard 
reading  as  a  rea- 
sonable occupa- 
tion changed  the 
whole  aspect  of 
life  to  me  and  I  began  to  have  confidence  in  what 
I  could  do." 

Among  the  young  men  of  the  social  clubs  a 
large  proportion  of  the  Jewish  ones  at  least  obtain 
the  advantages  of  a  higher  education.  The  parents 
make  every  sacrifice  to  help  them  through  the  high 
school  after  which  the  young  men  attend  uni- 
versities and  professional  schools,  largely  through 
their  own  efforts.     From  time  to  time  they  come 


THE   VALUE   OF   SOCIAL   CLUBS     347 

back  to  us  with  their  honors  thick  upon  them ; 
I  remember  one  who  returned  with  the  prize  in 
oratory  from  a  contest  between  several  western 
State  universities,  proudly  testifying  that  he  had 
obtained  his  confidence  in  our  Henry  Clay  Club  ; 
another  came  back  with  a  degree  from  Harvard 
University  saying  that  he  had  made  up  his  mind 
to  go  there  the  summer  I  read  Royce's  "Aspects 
of  Modern  Philosophy"  with  a  group  of  young 
men  who  had  challenged  my  scathing  remark  that 
Herbert  Spencer  was  not  the  only  man  who  had 
ventured  a  solution  of  the  riddles  of  the  universe. 
Occasionally  one  of  these  learned  young  folk 
does  not  like  to  be  reminded  that  he  once  lived 
in  our  vicinity,  but  that  happens  rarely,  and  for 
the  most  part  they  are  loyal  to  us  in  much  the 
same  spirit  as  they  are  to  their  ow^n  families  and 
traditions.  Sometimes  they  go  further  and  tell 
us  that  the  standards  of  tastes  and  code  of  man- 
ners which  Hull-House  has  enabled  them  to  form, 
have  made  a  very  great  difference  in  their  percep- 
tions and  estimates  of  the  larger  world  as  well  as 
in  their  own  reception  there.  Five  out  of  one 
club  of  twenty-five  young  men  who  had  held 
together  for  eleven  years,  entered  the  University 
of  Chicago  but  although  the  rest  of  the  Club 
called  them  the  ''intellectuals,"  the  old  friendships 
still  held. 

In  addition  to  these  rising  young  people  given 
to  debate  and  dramatics,  and  to  the  members  of 


348    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

the  public  school  alumni  associations  which  meet 
in  our  rooms,  there  are  hundreds  of  others  who 
for  years  have  come  to  Hull-House  frankly  in 
search  of  that  pleasure  and  recreation  which  all 
young  things  crave  and  which  those  who  have 
spent  long  hours  in  a  factory  or  shop  demand  as  a 
right.  For  these  young  people  all  sorts  of  pleasure 
clubs  have  been  cherished,  and  large  dancing  classes 
have  been  organized.  One  supreme  gayety  has 
come  to  be  an  annual  event  of  such  importance 
that  it  is  talked  of  from  year  to  year.  For  six 
weeks  before  St.  Patrick's  day,  a  small  group  of 
residents  put  their  best  powers  of  invention  and 
construction  into  preparation  for  a  cotillion  which 
is  like  a  pageant  in  its  gayety  and  vigor.  The 
parents  sit  in  the  gallery,  and  the  mothers  appre- 
ciate more  than  any  one  else  perhaps,  the  value  of 
this  ball  to  which  an  invitation  is  so  highly  prized ; 
although  their  standards  of  manners  may  differ 
widely  from  the  conventional,  they  know  full 
well  when  the  companionship  of  the  young  people 
is  safe  and  unsullied. 

As  an  illustration  of  this  difference  in  standard, 
I  may  instance  an  early  Hull-House  picnic  ar- 
ranged by  a  club  of  young  people,  who  found  at 
the  last  moment  that  the  club  director  could  not 
go  and  accepted  the  offer  of  the  mother  of  one 
of  the  club  members  to  take  charge  of  them. 
When  they  trooped  back  in  the  evening,  tired  and 
J^^PPyj  they  displayed  a  photograph  of  the  group 


THE  VALUE  OF   SOCIAL   CLUBS     349 

wherein  each  man's  arm  was  carefully  placed 
about  a  girl ;  no  feminine  waist  lacked  an  arm 
save  that  of  the  proud  chaperon,  who  sat  in  the 
middle  smiling  upon  all.  Seeing  that  the  photo- 
graph somewhat  surprised  us,  the  chaperon  stoutly 
explained,  "This  may  look  queer  to  you,  but  there 
wasn't  one  thing  about  that  picnic  that  wasn't 
nice,"  and  her  statement  was  a  perfectly  truthful 
one. 

Although  more  conventional  customs  are  care- 
fully enforced  at  our  many  parties  and  festivities, 
and  while  the  dancing  classes  are  as  highly  prized 
for  the  opportunity  they  afford  for  enforcing 
standards  as  for  their  ostensible  aim,  the  residents 
at  Hull-House,  in  their  efforts  to  provide  opportu- 
nities for  clean  recreation,  receive  the  most  valued 
help  from  the  experienced  wisdom  of  the  older 
women  of  the  neighborhood.  Bowen  Hall  is  con- 
stantly used  for  dancing  parties  with  soft  drinks 
established  in  its  foyer.  The  parties  given  by  the 
Hull-House  clubs  are  by  invitation  and  the  young 
people  themselves  carefully  maintain  their  stand- 
ard of  entrance  so  that  the  most  cautious  mother 
may  feel  safe  when  her  daughter  goes  to  one  of  our 
parties.  No  club  festivity  is  permitted  without 
the  presence  of  a  director;  no  young  man  under 
the  influence  of  liquor  is  allowed ;  certain  types  of 
dancing  often  innocently  started  are  strictly  pro- 
hibited; and  above  all,  early  closing  is  insisted 
upon.     This  standardizing  of  pleasure  has  always 


350    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

seemed  an  obligation  to  the  residents  of  Hull-House, 
but  we  are,  I  hope,  saved  from  that  prlgglslmess 
which  young  people  so  heartily  resent,  by  the 
Mardi  Gras  dance  and  other  festivities  which  the 
residents  themselves  arrange  and  successfully  carry 
out. 

In  spite  of  our  belief  that  the  standards  of  a 
ball  may  be  almost  as  valuable  to  those  without 
as  to  those  within,  the  residents  are  constantly 
concerned  for  those  many  young  people  in  the 
neighborhood  who  are  too  hedonistic  to  submit  to 
the  discipline  of  a  dancing  class  or  even  to  the 
claim  of  a  pleasure  club,  but  who  go  about  in 
freebooter  fashion  to  find  pleasure  wherever  it 
may  be  cheaply  on  sale. 

Such  young  people,  well  meaning  but  Impatient 
of  control,  become  the  easy  victims  of  the  worst 
type  of  public  dance  halls  and  of  even  darker 
places,  whose  purposes  are  hidden  under  music 
and  dancing.  We  were  thoroughly  frightened 
when  we  learned  that  during  the  year  which 
ended  last  December,  more  than  twent^^-five 
thousand  young  people  under  the  age  of  twenty- 
five  passed  through  the  Juvenile  and  Municipal 
Courts  of  Chicago  —  approximately  one  out  of 
every  eighty  of  the  entire  population,  or  one  out 
of  every  fifty-two  of  those  under  twenty-five  years 
of  age.  One's  heart  aches  for  these  young  people 
caught  by  the  outside  glitter  of  city  gayety,  who 
make   such   a   feverish   attempt   to   snatch   it   for 


THE   VALUE   OF   SOCIAL   CLUBS     351 

themselves.  The  young  people  In  our  clubs  are 
comparatively  safe,  but  many  instances  come  to 
the  knowledge  of  Hull-House  residents  which 
make  us  long  for  the  time  when  the  city,  through 
more  small  parks,  municipal  gymnasiums  and 
schoolrooms  open  for  recreation,  can  guard  from 
disaster  these  young  people  who  walk  so  care- 
lessly, on  the  edge  of  the  pit. 

The  heedless  girls  believe  that  If  they  lived  in 
big  houses  and  possessed  pianos  and  jewelry,  the 
coveted  social  life  would  come  to  them.  I  know 
a  Bohemian  girl  who  surreptitiously  saved  her  over- 
time wages  until  she  had  enough  money  to  hire  for 
a  week  a  room  with  a  piano  In  It  where  young 
men  might  come  to  call,  as  they  could  not  do  in 
her  crowded  untidy  home.  Of  course  she  had  no 
way  of  knowing  the  sort  of  young  men  who  quickly 
discover  an  unprotected  girl. 

Another  girl  of  American  parentage  who  had 
come  to  Chicago  to  seek  her  fortune,  found  at  the 
end  of  a  year  that  sorting  shipping  receipts  In  a 
dark  corner  of  a  warehouse  not  only  failed  of 
accumulate  riches  but  did  not  even  bring  the 
^'attentions"  which  her  quiet  country  home 
afforded.  By  dint  of  long  sacrifice  she  had  saved 
fifteen  dollars  ;  with  five  she  bought  an  Imitation 
sapphire  necklace,  and  the  balance  she  changed 
Into  a  ten  dollar  bill.  The  evening  her  pathetic 
little  snare  was  set,  she  walked  home  with  one  of 
the  clerks  in  the  establishment,  told  him  that  she 


352    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

had  come  into  a  fortune,  and  was  obliged  to  wear 
the  heirloom  necklace  to  insure  its  safety,  per- 
mitted him  to  see  that  she  carried  ten  dollars  in 
her  glove  for  carfare  and  conducted  him  to  a 
handsome  Prairie  Avenue  residence.  There  she 
gayly  bade  him  good-by  and  ran  up  the  steps  shut- 
ting herself  in  the  vestibule  from  which  she  did 
not  emerge  until  the  dazzled  and  bewildered  young 
man  had  vanished  down  the  street. 

Then  there  is  the  ever  recurring  difficulty  about 
dress ;  the  insistence  of  the  young  to  be  gayly  be- 
decked to  the  utter  consternation  of  the  hard- 
working parents  who  are  paying  for  a  house  and 
lot.  The  Polish  girl  who  stole  five  dollars  from 
her  employer's  till  with  which  to  buy  a  white 
dress  for  a  church  picnic  was  turned  away  from 
home  by  her  indignant  father  who  replaced  the 
money  to  save  the  family  honor,  but  would  harbor 
no  "thief"  in  a  household  of  growing  children 
who,  in  spite  of  the  sister's  revolt,  continued  to  be 
dressed  in  dark  heavy  clothes  through  all  the  hot 
summer.  There  are  a  multitude  of  working  girls 
who  for  hours  carry  hair  ribbons  and  jewelry  in 
their  pockets  or  stockings,  for  they  can  wear  them 
only  during  the  journey  to  and  from  work.  Some- 
times this  desire  to  taste  pleasure,  to  escape  into 
a  world  of  congenial  companionship  takes  more 
elaborate  forms  and  often  ends  disastrously.  I 
recall  a  charming  young  girl,  the  oldest  daughter 
of  a  respectable  German  family,  whom  I  first  saw 


THE   VALUE   OF   SOCIAL   CLUBS     353 

one  spring  afternoon  issuing  from  a  tall,  factory. 
She  wore  a  blue  print  gown  which  so  deepened  the 
blue  of  her  eyes  that  Wordsworth's  line  fairly  sung 
itself:  — 

The  pliant  harebell  swinging  in  the  breeze 
On  some  gray  rock. 

I  was  grimly  reminded  of  that  moment  a  year 
later  when  I  heard  the  tale  of  this  seventeen-year- 
old  girl,  who  had  worked  steadily  in  the  same 
factory  for  four  years  before  she  resolved  ''to  see 
life."  In  order  not  to  arouse  her  parents'  sus- 
picions, she  borrowed  thirty  dollars  from  one 
of  those  loan  sharks  who  require  no  security  from 
a  pretty  girl,  so  that  she  might  start  from  home 
every  morning  as  if  to  go  to  work.  For  three 
weeks  she  spent  the  first  part  of  each  dearly 
bought  day  in  a  department  store  where  she 
lunched  and  unfortunately  made  some  dubious 
acquaintances ;  in  the  afternoon  she  established 
herself  in  a  theater  and  sat  contentedly  hour 
after  hour  watching  the  endless  vaudeville  until 
the  usual  time  for  returning  home.  At  the  end 
of  each  week  she  gave  her  parents  her  usual  wage, 
but  when  her  thirty  dollars  was  exhausted  it 
seemed  unendurable  that  she  should  return  to  the 
monotony  of  the  factory.  In  the  light  of  her 
newly  acquired  experience  she  had  learned  that 
possibility  which  the  city  ever  holds  open  to  the 
restless  girl. 


2A 


354    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 


That  more  such  girls  do  not  come  to  grief  is 
due  to  those  mothers  who  understand  the  in- 
satiable demand  for  a  good  time,  and  if  all  of  the 
mothers  did  understand,  those  pathetic  statistics 
which  show  that  four  fifths  of  all  prostitutes  are 

under  twenty 
years  of  age  would 
be  marvelously 
changed.  We  are 
told  that ''the  will 
to  live  "  is  aroused 
in  each  baby  by 
his  mother's  ir- 
resistible desire  to 
play  with  him, 
the  physiological 
value  of  joy  that 
a  child  is  born, 
and  that  the  high 
death  rate  in  in- 
stitutions is  in- 
creased by  ''  the 
discontented 
babies"  whom  no  one  persuades  into  living. 
Something  of  the  same  sort  is  necessary  in  that 
second  birth  at  adolescence.  The  young  people 
need  affection  and  understanding  each  one  for 
himself,  if  they  are  to  be  induced  to  live  in  an 
inheritance  of  decorum  and  safety  and  to  under- 
stand  the   foundations    upon   which    this    orderly 


THE  VALUE  OF  SOCIAL  CLUBS  3 55 

world  rests.  No  one  comprehends  their  needs  so 
sympathetically  as  those  mothers  who  iron  the 
flimsy  starched  finery  of  their  grown-up  daughters 
late  into  the  night,  and  who  pay  for  a  red  velvet 
parlor  set  on  the  installment  plan,  although  the 
younger  children  may  sadly  need  new  shoes. 
These  mothers  apparently  understand  the  sharp 
demand  for  social  pleasure  and  do  their  best  to 
respond  to  it,  although  at  the  same  time  they 
constantly  minister  to  all  the  physical  needs  of  an 
exigent  family  of  little  children.  We  often  come 
to  a  realization  of  the  truth  of  Walt  Whitman's 
statement,  that  one  of  the  surest  sources  of  wis- 
dom is  the  mother  of  a  large  family. 

It  is  but  natural,  perhaps,  that  the  members  of 
the  Hull-House  Woman's  Club  whose  prosperity 
has  given  them  some  leisure  and  a  chance  to  re- 
move their  own  families  to  neighborhoods  less 
full  of  temptations,  should  have  offered  their 
assistance  in  our  attempt  to  provide  recreation  for 
these  restless  young  people.  In  many  instances 
their  experience  in  the  club  itself  has  enabled 
them  to  perceive  these  needs.  One  day  a  Juvenile 
Court  oflicer  told  me  that  a  woman's  club  mem- 
ber, who  has  a  large  family  of  her  own  and  one 
boy  sufficiently  difficult,  had  undertaken  to  care 
for  a  ward  of  the  Juvenile  Court  who  lived  only 
a  block  from  her  house,  and  that  she  had  kept 
him  in  the  path  of  rectitude  for  six  months.  In 
reply  to  my  congratulations  upon  this   successful 


356    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

bit  of  reform  to  the  club  woman  herself,  she  said 
that  she  was  quite  ashamed  that  she  had  not 
undertaken  the  task  earlier  for  she  had  for  years 
known  the  boy's  mother  who  scrubbed  a  down- 
town office  building,  leaving  home  every  evening 
at  five  and  returning  at  eleven  during  the  very 
time  the  boy  could  most  easily  find  opportunities 
for  wrongdoing.  She  said  that  her  obligation 
toward  this  boy  had  not  occurred  to  her  until  one 
day  when  the  club  members  were  making  pillow- 
cases for  the  Detention  Home  of  the  Juvenile 
Court,  it  suddenly  seemed  perfectly  obvious  that 
her  share  in  the  salvation  of  wayward  children 
was  to  care  for  this  particular  boy  and  she  had 
asked  the  Juvenile  Court  officer  to  commit  him  to 
her.  She  invited  the  boy  to  her  house  to  supper 
every  day  that  she  might  know  just  where  he 
was  at  the  crucial  moment  of  twilight,  and  she 
adroitly  managed  to  keep  him  under  her  own  roof 
for  the  evening  if  she  did  not  approve  of  the 
plans  he  had  made.  She  concluded  with  the 
remark  that  it  was  queer  that  the  sight  of 
the  boy  himself  hadn't  appealed  to  her  but  that 
the  suggestion  had  come  to  her  in  such  a  round- 
about way. 

She  was,  of  course,  reflecting  upon  a  common 
trait  in  human  nature,  —  that  we  much  more  easily 
see  the  duty  at  hand  when  we  see  it  in  relation 
to  the  social  duty  of  which  it  is  a  part.  When 
she  knew  that  an  effort  was  being  made  through- 


THE  VALUE   OF   SOCIAL   CLUBS     357 

out  al!  the  large  cities  in  the  United  States  to 
reclaim  the  wayward  boy,  to  provide  him  with 
reasonable  amusement,  to  give  him  his  chance  for 
growth  and  development,  and  when  she  became 
ready  to  take  her  share  in  that  movement,  she 
suddenly  saw  the  concrete  case  which  she  had  not 
recognized  before. 

We  are  slowly  learning  that  social  advance  de- 
pends quite  as  much  upon  an  increase  in  moral 
sensibility  as  it  does  upon  a  sense  of  duty,  and  of 
this  one  could  cite  many  illustrations.  I  was  at 
one  time  chairman  of  the  Child  Labor  Committee 
in  the  General  Federation  of  Woman's  Clubs, 
which  sent  out  a  schedule  asking  each  club  in  the 
United  States  to  report  as  nearly  as  possible  all 
the  working  children  under  fourteen  living  in  its 
vicinity.  A  Florida  club  filled  out  the  schedule 
with  an  astonishing  number  of  Cuban  children  who 
were  at  work  in  sugar  mills,  and  the  club  members 
registered  a  complaint  that  our  committee  had  sent 
the  schedule  too  late,  for  if  they  had  realized  the 
conditions  earlier,  they  might  have  presented  a 
bill  to  the  legislature  which  had  now  adjourned. 
Of  course  the  children  had  been  working  in  the 
sugar  mills  for  years,  and  had  probably  gone  back 
and  forth  under  the  very  eyes  of  the  club  women, 
but  the  women  had  never  seen  them,  much  less 
felt  any  obligation  to  protect  them,  until  they 
joined  a  club,  and  the  club  joined  a  Federation, 
and    the    Federation    appointed    a    Child    Labor 


358    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

Committee  who  sent  them  a  schedule.  With 
their  quickened  perceptions  they  then  saw  the 
rescue  of  these  famiUar  children  in  the  light  of  a 
social  obligation.  Through  some  such  experi- 
ences the  members  of  the  Hull-House  Women's 
Club  have  obtained  the  power  of  seeing  the  con- 
crete through  the  general  and  have  entered  into 
various  undertakings. 

Very  early  in  its  history  the  club  formed  vv^hat 
was  called  ^'A  Social  Extension  Committee." 
Once  a  month  this  committee  gives  parties  to 
people  in  the  neighborhood  who  for  any  reason 
seem  forlorn  and  without  much  social  pleasure. 
One  evening  they  invited  only  Italian  women, 
thereby  crossing  a  distinct  social  "gulf,"  for  there 
certainly  exists  as  great  a  sense  of  social  difference 
between  the  prosperous  Irish-American  women  and 
the  South-Italian  peasants  as  between  any  two  sets 
of  people  in  the  city  of  Chicago.  The  Italian 
women,  who  were  almost  eastern  in  their  habits, 
all  stayed  at  home  and  sent  their  husbands,  and 
the  social  extension  committee  entered  the  drawing- 
room  to  find  it  occupied  by  rows  of  Italian  work- 
Ingmen,  who  seemed  to  prefer  to  sit  in  chairs  along 
the  wall.  They  were  quite  ready  to  be  ''socially 
extended,"  but  plainly  puzzled  as  to  what  it  was 
all  about.  The  evening  finally  developed  into  a 
very  successful  party,  not  so  much  because  the 
committee  were  equal  to  it,  as  because  the  Italian 
men  rose  to  the  occasion. 


THE  VALUE   OF   SOCIAL   CLUBS     359 

Untiring  pairs  of  them  danced  the  tarantella; 
they  sang  Neapolitan  songs ;  one  of  them  per- 
formed some  of  those  wonderful  sleight-of-hand 
tricks  so  often  seen  on  the  streets  of  Naples ;  they 
explained  the  coral  finger  of  St.  Januarius  which 
they  wore ;  they  politely  ate  the  strange  American 
refreshments ;  and  when  the  evening  was  over, 
one  of  the  committee  said  to  me,  ''Do  you  know 
I  am  ashamed  of  the  way  I  have  always  talked 
about  'dagos,'  they  are  quite  like  other  people, 
only  one  must  take  a  little  more  pains  with  them. 
I  have  been  nagging  my  husband  to  move  off 
M  Street  because  they  are  moving  in,  but  I  am  going 
to  try  staying  awhile  and  see  if  I  can  make  a  real 
acquaintance  with  some  of  them."  To  my  mind 
at  that  moment  the  speaker  had  passed  from  the 
region  of  the  uncultivated  person  into  the  possi- 
bilities of  the  cultivated  person.  The  former  is 
bounded  by  a  narrow  outlook  on  life,  unable  to 
overcome  differences  of  dress  and  habit,  and  his 
interests  are  slowly  contracting  within  a  circum- 
scribed area  ;  while  the  latter  constantly  tends  to 
be  more  a  citizen  of  the  world  because  of  his 
growing  understanding  of  all  kinds  of  people 
with  their  varying  experiences.  We  send  our 
young  people  to  Europe  that  they  may  lose 
their  provincialism  and  be  able  to  judge  their 
fellows  by  a  more  universal  test,  as  we  send 
them  to  college  that  they  may  attain  the  cul- 
tural   background   and   a   larger  outlook;    all  of 


36o    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

these  it  is  possible  to  acquire  in  other  ways,  as 
this  member  of  the  woman's  club  had  discovered 
for  herself. 

This  social  extension  committee  under  the  leader- 
ship of  an  ex-president  of  the  Club,  a  Hull-House 
resident  with  a  wide  acquaintance,  also  discover 
many  of  those  lonely  people  of  which  every  city 
contains  so  large  a  number.  We  are  only  slowly 
apprehending  the  very  real  danger  to  the  individual 
who  fails  to  establish  some  sort  of  genuine  relation 
with  the  people  who  surround  him.  We  are  all 
more  or  less  familiar  with  the  results  of  isolation 
in  rural  districts  ;  the  Bronte  sisters  have  portrayed 
the  hideous  immorality  and  savagery  of  the  remote 
dwellers  on  the  bleak  moorlands  of  northern  Eng- 
land ;  Miss  Wilkins  has  written  of  the  overdevel- 
oped will  of  the  solitary  New  Englander ;  but  tales 
still  wait  to  be  told  of  the  isolated  city  dweller.  In 
addition  to  the  lonely  young  man  recently  come  to 
town,  and  the  country  family  who  have  not  yet 
made  their  connections,  are  many  other  people 
who,  because  of  temperament  or  from  an  estimate 
of  themselves  which  will  not  permit  them  to  make 
friends  with  the  "people  around  here,"  or  who, 
because  they  are  victims  to  a  combination  of  cir- 
cumstances, lead  a  life  as  lonely  and  untouched  by 
the  city  about  them  as  if  they  were  in  remote 
country  districts.  The  very  fact  that  it  requires 
an  effort  to  preserve  isolation  from  the  tenement- 
house  life  which  flows  all  about  them,  makes  the 


THE  VALUE  OF   SOCIAL   CLUBS     361 

character  stiffer  and  harsher  than  mere  country 
solitude  could  do. 

Many  instances  of  this  come  into  my  mind  : 
the  faded,  ladylike  hairdresser,  who  came  and 
went  to  her  work  for  twenty  years,  carefully  con- 
cealing her  dwelling  place  from  the  ''other  people 
in  the  shop,"  moving  whenever  they  seemed  too 
curious  about  it,  and  priding  herself  that  no 
neighbor  had  ever  ''stepped  inside  her  door,"  and 
yet  w^hen  discovered  through  an  asthma  which 
forced  her  to  crave  friendly  offices,  she  was  most 
responsive  and  even  gay  in  a  social  atmosphere. 
Another  woman  made  a  long  effort  to  conceal 
the  poverty  resulting  from  her  husband's  inveter- 
ate gambling  and  to  secure  for  her  children  the 
educational  advantages  to  which  her  family  had 
always  been  accustomed.  Her  five  children,  who 
are  now  university  graduates,  do  not  realize  how 
hard  and  solitary  was  her  early  married  life  when 
we  first  knew  her,  and  she  was  beginning  to  regret 
the  isolation  in  which  her  children  were  being 
reared,  for  she  saw  that  their  lack  of  early  compan- 
ionship would  always  cripple  their  power  to  make 
friends.  She  was  glad  to  avail  herself  of  the  social 
resources  of  Hull-House  for  them,  and  at  last 
even  for  herself. 

The  leader  of  the  social  extension  committee 
has  also  been  able,  through  her  connection  with 
the  vacant  lot  garden  movement  in  Chicago,  to 
maintain  a  most  flourishing  "friendly  club"  largely 


362    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

composed  of  people  who  cultivate  these  garden 
plots.  During  the  club  evening  at  least,  they  re- 
gain something  of  the  ease  of  the  man  who  is 
being  estimated  by  the  bushels  per  acre  of  potatoes 
he  has  raised,  and  not  by  that  flimsy  city  judg- 
ment so  often  based  upon  store  clothes.  Their 
jollity  and  enthusiasm  are  unbounded,  expressing 
itself  in  clog  dances  and  rousing  old  songs  often 
in  sharp  contrast  to  the  overworked,  worn  aspects 
of  the  members. 

Of  course  there  are  surprising  possibilities  dis- 
covered through  other  clubs,  in  one  of  Greek 
women  or  in  the  "circolo  Italiano,"  for  a  social 
club  often  affords  a  sheltered  space  in  which  the 
gentler  social  usages  may  be  exercised,  as  the 
more  vigorous  clubs  afford  a  point  of  departure 
into  larger  social  concerns. 

The  experiences  of  the  Hull-House  Woman's 
Club  constantly  react  upon  the  family  life  of  the 
members.  Their  husbands  come  with  them  to  the 
annual  midwinter  reception,  to  club  concerts  and 
entertainments ;  the  little  children  come  to  the 
May  party,  with  its  dancing  and  games ;  the 
older  children,  to  the  day  in  June  when  prizes  are 
given  to  those  sons  and  daughters  of  the  members 
who  present  a  good  school  record  as  graduates 
either  from  the  eighth  grade  or  from  a  high  school. 

It  seemed,  therefore,  but  a  fit  recognition  of 
their  efforts  when  the  president  of  the  club 
erected    a    building    planned    especially    for   their 


THE  VALUE  OF  SOCIAL   CLUBS     363 

needs,  with  their   own    library    and    a    hall    large 
enough    for    their    various     social    undertakings, 


although  of  course  Bowen  Hall  is  constantly  put 
to  many  other  uses. 

It  was  under  the  leadership  of  this  same  able 
president  that  the  club  achieved  its  wider  purposes 
and  took  its  place  with  the  other  forces   for  city 


364    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

betterment.  The  club  had  begun,  as  nearly  all 
women's  clubs  do,  upon  the  basis  of  self-improve- 
ment, although  the  foundations  for  this  later  devel- 
opment had  been  laid  by  one  of  their  earliest  presi- 
dents, who  was  the  first  probation  officer  of  the 
Juvenile  Court,  and  who  had  so  shared  her  experi- 
ences with  the  club  that  each  member  felt  the  truth 
as  well  as  the  pathos  of  the  lines  inscribed  on  her 
memorial  tablet  erected  in  their  club  library:  — 

*'As  more  exposed  to  suffering  and  distress 
Thence  also  more  alive  to  tenderness." 

Each  woman  had  discovered  opportunities  in  her 
own  experience  for  this  same  tender  understand- 
ing, and  under  its  succeeding  president,  Mrs. 
Pelham,  in  its  determination  to  be  of  use  to  the 
needy  and  distressed,  the  club  developed  many 
philanthropic  undertakings  from  the  humble  be- 
ginnings of  a  linen  chest  kept  constantly  filled 
with  clothing  for  the  sick  and  poor.  It  required, 
however,  an  adequate  knowledge  of  adverse  city 
conditions  so  productive  of  juvenile  delinquency 
and  a  sympathy  which  could  enkindle  itself  in 
many  others  of  divers  faiths  and  training,  to 
arouse  the  club  to  its  finest  public  spirit.  This 
was  done  by  a  later  president,  Mrs.  Bowen,  who, 
as  head  of  the  Juvenile  Protective  Association, 
had  learned  that  the  moralized  energy  of  a  group 
is  best  fitted  to  cope  with  the  complicated  prob- 
lems of  a  city ;    but  it  required  ability  of  an  un- 


THE  VALUE  OF   SOCIAL   CLUBS     365 

usual  order  to  evoke  a  sense  of  social  obligation 
from  the  very  knowledge  of  adverse  city  condi- 
tions which  the  club  members  possessed,  and  to 
connect  it  with  the  many  civic  and  philanthropic 
organizations  of  the  ^city  in  such  wise  as  to  make 
it  socially  useful.  This  financial  and  representa- 
tive connection  with  outside  organizations,  is 
valuable  to  the  club  only  as  it  expresses  its  sym- 
pathy and  kindliness  at  the  same  time  in  concrete 
form.  A  group  of  members  who  lunch  with  Mrs. 
Bowen  each  week  at  Hull-House  discuss,  not  only 
topics  of  public  interest,  sometimes  with  experts 
whom  they  have  long  known  through  their  mutual 
undertakings,  but  also  their  own  club  affairs  in 
the  light  of  this  larger  knowledge. 

Thus  the  value  of  social  clubs  broadens  out  In 
one's  mind  to  an  instrument  of  companionship 
through  which  many  may  be  led  from  a  sense 
of  isolation  to  one  of  civic  responsibility,  even  as 
another  t'^pe  of  club  provides  recreational  facili- 
ties for  those  who  have  had  only  meaningless 
excitem-  nts,  or,  as  a  third  type,  opens  new  and 
interest,  ng  vistas  of  life  to  those  who  are  ambitious. 

The  entire  organization  of  the  social  life  at 
Hull-House,  while  it  has  been  fostered  and  directed 
by  residents  and  others,  has  been  largely  pushed 
and  vitalized  from  within  by  the  club  members 
themselves.  Sir  Walter  Besant  once  told  me  that 
Hull-House  stood  in  his  mind  more  nearly  for  the 
ideal   of   the   "Palace   of   Delight"   than   did  the 


366    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

'* London  People's  Palace"  because  we  had  de- 
pended upon  the  social  resources  of  the  people 
using  it.  He  begged  me  not  to  allow  Hull-House 
to  become  too  educational.  He  believed  it  much 
easier  to  develop  a  polytechnic  institute  than  a 
large  recreational  center,  but  he  doubted  whether 
the  former  was  as  useful. 

The  social  clubs  form  a  basis  of  acquaintance- 
ship for  many  people  living  in  other  parts  of  the 
city.  Through  friendly  relations  with  individuals, 
which  is  perhaps  the  sanest  method  of  approach, 
they  are  thus  brought  into  contact,  many  of  them 
for  the  first  time,  with  the  industrial  and  social 
problems  challenging  the  moral  resources  of  our 
contemporary  life.  During  our  twenty  years  hun- 
dreds of  these  non-residents  have  directed  clubs  and 
classes,  and  have  increased  the  number  of  Chicago 
citizens  who  are  conversant  with  adverse  social 
conditions  and  conscious  that  only  by  the  un- 
ceasing devotion  of  each,  according  to  his  strength, 
shall  the  compulsions  and  hardships,  the  stupidi- 
ties and  cruelties  of  life  be  overcome.  The  num- 
ber of  people  thus  informed  is  constantly  increas- 
ing in  all  our  American  cities,  and  they  may  in 
time  remove  the  reproach  of  social  neglect  and 
indifference  which  has  so  long  rested  upon  the 
citizens  of  the  new  world.  I  recall  the  experience 
of  an  Englishman  who,  not  only  because  he  was  a 
member  of  the  Queen's  Cabinet  and  box  a  title, 
but  also  because  he  was   an   able  statesman,  was 


THE  VALUE  OF   SOCIAL   CLUBS    367 


entertained  with  great  enthusiasm  by  the  leading 
citizens  of  Chicago.  At  a  large  dinner  party  he 
asked  the  lady  sitting  next  to  him  what  our  tene- 
ment-house legislation  was  iri  regard  to  the  cubic 
feet  of  air  required  for  each  occupant  of  a  tene- 
ment bedroom; 
upon  her  disclaim- 
ing any  knowl- 
edge of  the  sub-  ( 
ject,  the  inquiry 
was  put  to  all  the 
diners  at  the  long 
table,  all  of  whom 
showed  surprise 
that  they  should 
be  expected  to 
possess  this  in- 
formation. In 
telling  me  the  in- 
cident afterward, 
the  English  guest 
said  that  such  in-  tj 
difference  could 
not  have  been  found  among  the  leading  citizens 
of  London,  w^hose  public  spirit  had  been  aroused  to 
provide  such  housing  conditions  as  should  protect 
tenement  dwellers  at  least  from  wanton  loss  of  vital- 
ity and  lowered  industrial  efficiency.  When  I  met 
the  same  Englishman  in  London  five  years  after- 
wards, he  immediately  asked  me  whether  Chicago 


368    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

citizens  were  still  so  indifferent  to  the  conditions  of 
the  poor  that  they  took  no  interest  in  their  proper 
housing.  I  was  quick  with  that  defense  which  an 
American  is  obliged  to  use  so  often  in  Europe,  that 
our  very  democracy  so  long  presupposed  that  each 
citizen  could  care  for  himself  that  we  are  slow  to 
develop  a  sense  of  social  obligation.  He  smiled  at 
the  familiar  phrases  and  was  still  inclined  to  attrib- 
ute our  indifference  to  sheer  ignorance  of  social 
conditions. 

The  entire  social  development  of  Hull-House  is 
so  unlike  what  I  predicted  twenty  years  ago,  that 
I  venture  to  quote  from  that  ancient  writing  as 
an  end  to  this  chapter. 

The  social  organism  has  broken  down  through  large 
districts  of  our  great  cities.  Many  of  the  people 
living  there  are  very  poor,  the  majority  of  them  with- 
out leisure  or  energy  for  anything  but  the  gain  of 
subsistence. 

They  live  for  the  moment  side  by  side,  many  of 
them  without  knowledge  of  each  other,  without  fellow- 
ship, without  local  tradition  or  public  spirit,  without 
social  organization  of  any  kind.  Practically  nothing  Is 
done  to  remedy  this.  The  people  who  might  do  it, 
who  have  the  social  tact  and  training,  the  large  houses, 
and  the  traditions  and  customs  of  hospitality,  live  In 
other  parts  of  the  city.  The  club  houses,  libraries, 
galleries  and  semi-public  conveniences  for  social  life 
are  also  blocks  away.  We  find  workingmen  organ- 
ized into  armies  of  producers  because  men  of  executive 
ability  and  business   sagacity  have  found   it  to    their 


THE  VALUE   OF   SOCIAL   CLUBS     369 

interests  thus  to  organize  them.  But  these  working 
men  are  not  organized  socially;  although  lodging  in 
crowded  tenement  houses,  they  are  living  without  a 
corresponding  social  contact.  The  chaos  is  as  great  as 
it  would  be  were  they  working  in  huge  factories  with- 
out foreman  or  superintendent.  Their  ideas  and  re- 
sources are  cramped,  and  the  desire  for  higher  social 
pleasure  becomes  extinct.  They  have  no  share  in  the 
traditions  and  social  energy  which  make  for  progress. 
Too  often  their  only  place  of  meeting  is  a  saloon,  their 
only  host  a  bartender;  a  local  demagogue  forms  their 
public  opinion.  Men  of  ability  and  refinement,  of 
social  power  and  university  cultivation,  stay  away 
from  them.  Personally,  I  believe  the  men  who  lose 
most  are  those  who  thus  stay  away.  But  the  paradox 
is  here  :  when  cultivated  people  do  stay  away  from  a 
certain  portion  of  the  population,  when  all  social  ad- 
vantages are  persistently  withheld,  it  may  be  for  years, 
the  result  itself  is  pointed  to  as  a  reason  and  is  used  as 
an  argument,  for  the  continued  withholding. 

It  is  constantly  said  that  because  the  masses  have 
never  had  social  advantages,  they  do  not  want  them, 
that  they  are  heavy  and  dull,  and  that  it  will  take 
political  or  philanthropic  machinery  to  change  them. 
This  divides  a  city  into  rich  and  poor ;  into  the  favored, 
who  express  their  sense  of  the  social  obligation  by  gifts 
of  money,  and  into  the  unfavored,  who  express  it  by 
clamoring  for  a  "share"  —  both  of  them  actuated  by  a 
vague  sense  of  justice.  This  division  of  the  city 
would  be  more  justifiable,  however,  if  the  people  who 
thus  isolate  themselves  on  certain  streets  and  use  their 
social  ability  for  each  other,  gained  enough  thereby  and 
added  sufficient  to  the  sum  total  of  social  progress  to 

2  B 


370    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

justify  the  withholding  of  the  pleasures  and  results  of 
that  progress,  from  so  many  people  who  ought  to  have 
them.  But  they  cannot  accomplish  this  for  the  social 
spirit  discharges  itself  in  many  forms,  and  no  one 
form  is  adequate  to  its  total  expression. 


A  Hull-House  Studio. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

Arts  at  Hull-House 

The  first  building  erected  for  Hull-House  con- 
tained an  art  gallery  well  lighted  for  day  and  even- 
ing use  and  our  first  exhibit  of  loaned  pictures  was 
opened  In  June,  1891,  by  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Barnett  of 
London.  It  is  always  pleasant  to  associate  their 
hearty  sympathy  w4th  that  first  exhibit,  and  thus 
to  connect  it  with  their  pioneer  efforts  at  Toynbee 
Hall  to  secure  for  working  people  the  opportunity 
to  know  the  best  art,  and  with  their  establishment 
of  the  first  permanent  art  gallery  in  an  industrial 
quarter. 

We  took  pride  In  the  fact  that  our  first  exhibit 
contained  some  of  the  best  pictures  Chicago  af- 
forded, and  we  conscientiously  insured  them  against 
fire  and  carefully  guarded  them  by  night  and  day. 

We  had  five  of  these  exhibits  during  two  years, 
after  the  gallery  was  completed  :  two  of  oil  paint- 
ings, one  of  old  engravings  and  etchings,  one  of 
water  colors,  and  one  of  pictures  especially  selected 
for  use  In  the  public  schools.  These  exhibits  were 
surprisingly  well  attended  and  thousands  of  votes 
were  cast  for  the  most  popular  pictures.  Their  value 
to  the  neighborhood  of  course  had  to  be  deter- 

371 


372    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

mined  by  each  one  of  us  according  to  the  value  he 
attached  to  beauty  and  the  escape  it  offers  from 
dreary  reality  into  the  realm  of  the  imagination. 
Miss  Starr  always  insisted  that  the  arts  should 
receive  adequate  recognition  at  Hull-House  and 
urged  that  one  must  always  remember  "the  hungry 
individual  soul  which  without  art  will  have  passed 
unsolaced  and  unfed,  followed  by  other  souls  who 
lack  the  impulse  his  should  have  given." 

The  exhibits  afforded  pathetic  evidence  that  the 
older  immigrants  do  not  expect  the  solace  of  art 
in  this  country ;  an  Italian  expressed  great  sur- 
prise when  he  found  that  we,  although  Americans, 
still  liked  pictures,  and  said  quite  naively  that  he 
didn't  know  that  Americans  cared  for  anything 
but  dollars  —  that  looking  at  pictures  was  some- 
thing people  only  did  in  Italy. 

The  extreme  isolation  of  the  Italian  colony  was 
demonstrated  by  the  fact  that  he  did  not  know  that 
there  was  a  public  art  gallery  in  the  city  nor  any 
houses  in  which  pictures  were  regarded  as  treasures. 

A  Greek  was  much  surprised  to  see  a  photograph 
of  the  Acropolis  at  Hull-House  because  he  had  lived 
in  Chicago  for  thirteen  years  and  had  never  before 
met  any  Americans  who  knew  about  this  foremost 
glory  of  the  world.  Before  he  left  Greece  he  had 
imagined  that  Americans  would  be  most  eager  to 
see  pictures  of  Athens,  and  as  he  was  a  graduate  of  a 
school  of  technology,  he  had  prepared  a  book  of 
colored   drawings   and   had   made   a   collection  of 


ARTS  AT  HULL-HOUSE  373 

photographs  which  he  was  sure  Americans  would 
enjoy.  But  although  from  his  fruit  stand  near  one 
of  the  large  railroad  stations  he  had  conversed  with 
many  Americans  and  had  often  tried  to  lead  the 
conversation  back  to  ancient  Greece,  no  one  had 
responded,  and  he  had  at  last  concluded  that  "the 
people  of  Chicago  knew  nothing  of  ancient  times." 

The  loan  exhibits  were  continued  until  the  Chi- 
cago Art  Institute  was  opened  free  to  the  public  on 
Sunday  afternoons  and  parties  were  arranged  at 
Hull-House  and  conducted  there  by  a  guide.  In 
time  even  these  parties  were  discontinued  as  the 
galleries  became  better  known  in  all  parts  of  the 
city  and  the  Art  Institute  management  did  much 
to  make  pictures  popular. 

From  the  first  a  studio  was  maintained  at  Hull- 
House  which  has  developed  through  the  changing 
years  under  the  direction  of  Miss  Benedict,  one  of 
the  residents  who  is  a  member  of  the  faculty  in  the 
Art  Institute.  Buildings  on  the  Hull-House  quad- 
rangle furnish  studios  for  artists  who  find  something 
of  the  same  spirit  in  the  contiguous  Italian  colony 
that  the  French  artist  Is  traditionally  supposed  to 
discover  In  his  beloved  Latin  Quarter.  These 
artists  uncover  something  of  the  picturesque  In  the 
foreign  colonies,  which  they  have  reproduced  In 
painting,  etching,  and  lithography.  They  find 
their  classes  filled  not  only  by  young  people  pos- 
sessing facility  and  sometimes  talent,  but  also  by 
older  people  to  whom  the  studio  affords  the  one 


374    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

opportunity  of  escape  from  dreariness ;  a  widow 
with  four  children  who  supplemented  a  very  inade- 
quate income  by  teaching  the  piano,  for  six  years 
never  missed  her  weekly  painting  lesson  because  it 


was  ''her  one  pleasure";  another  woman  whose 
youth  and  strength  had  gone  into  the  care  of  an 
invalid  father,  poured  into  her  afternoon  in  the 
studio  once  a  week,  all  of  the  longing  for  self-ex- 
pression which  she  habitually  suppressed. 

Perhaps  the  most  satisfactory  results  of  the  studio 


ARTS   AT  HULL-HOUSE  375 

have  been  obtained  through  the  classes  of  young 
men  who  are  engaged  In  the  commercial  arts,  and 
who  are  glad  to  have  an  opportunity  to  work  out 
their  own  Ideas.  This  Is  true  of  young  engravers 
and  lithographers  ;  of  the  men  who  have  to  do  with 
posters  and  Illustrations  In  various  ways.  The 
little  pile  of  stones  and  the  lithographer's  hand- 
press  In  a  corner  of  the  studio  have  been  used  In 
many  an  experiment,  as  has  a  set  of  beautiful 
type  loaned  to  Hull-House  by  a  bibliophile. 

The  work  of  the  studio  almost  Imperceptibly 
merged  Into  the  crafts  and  well  within  the  first 
decade  a  shop  was  opened  at  Hull-House  under 
the  direction  of  several  residents  who  were  also 
members  of  the  Chicago  Arts  and  Crafts  Society. 
This  shop  Is  not  merely  a  school  where  people  are 
taught  and  then  sent  forth  to  use  their  teaching 
in  art  according  to  their  individual  initiative  and 
opportunity,  but  where  those  who  have  already 
been  carefully  trained,  may  express  the  best  they 
can  in  wood  or  metal.  The  Settlement  soon  dis- 
covers how  difficult  it  is  to  put  a  fringe  of  art  on  the 
end  of  a  day  spent  in  a  factory.  We  constantly 
see  young  people  doing  overhurried  work.  Wrap- 
ping bars  of  soap  in  pieces  of  paper  might  at  least 
give  the  pleasure  of  accuracy  and  repetition  if  It 
could  be  done  at  a  normal  pace,  but  when  paid  for 
by  the  piece,  speed  becomes  the  sole  requirement 
and  the  last  suggestion  of  human  Interest  is  taken 
away.     In  contrast  to  this  the  Hull-House  shop 


376    TWENTY  YEAlls   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

affords  many  examples  of  the  restorative  power  in 
the  exercise  of  a  genuine  craft ;  a  young  Russian 
who,  like  too  many  of  his  countrymen,  had  made  a 
desperate  effort  to  fit  himself  for  a  learned  profes- 
sion, and  who  had  almost  finished  his  course  in  a 
night  law  school,  used  to  watch  constantly  the 
work  being  done  in  the  metal  shop  at  Hull-House. 
One  evening  in  a  moment  of  sudden  resolve,  he 
took  off  his  coat,  sat  down  at  one  of  the  benches, 
and  began  to  work,  obviously  as  a  very  clever 
silversmith.  He  had  long  concealed  his  craft 
because  he  thought  it  would  hurt  his  efforts  as  a 
lawyer  and  because  he  imagined  an  office  more 
honorable  and  ''more  American"  than  a  shop. 
As  he  worked  on  during  his  two  leisure  evenings 
each  week,  his  entire  bearing  and  conversation 
registered  the  relief  of  one  who  abandons  the  effort 
he  is  not  fitted  for  and  becomes  a  man  on  his  own 
feet,  expressing  himself  through  a  familiar  and  deli- 
cate technique. 

Miss  Starr  at  length  found  herself  quite  impatient 
with  her  role  of  lecturer  on  the  arts,  while  all  the 
handicraft  about  her  was  untouched  by  beauty 
and  did  not  even  reflect  the  interest  of  the  workman. 
She  took  a  training  In  bookbinding  in  London  under 
Mr.  Cobden-Sanderson  and  established  her  bind- 
ery at  Hull-House  in  which  design  and  workman- 
ship, beauty  and  thoroughness  are  taught  to  a 
small  number  of  apprentices. 

From  the  very  first  winter,  concerts  which  are 


.    ARTS  AT  HULL-HOUSE  377 

still  continued  were  given  every  Sunday  after- 
noon in  the  Hull-House  drawing-room  and  later, 
as  the  audiences  increased,  in  the  larger  halls.  For 
these  we  are  indebted  to  musicians  from  every 
part  of  the  city.  Air.  William  Tomlins  early 
trained  large  choruses  of  adults  as  his  assistants 
did  of  children,  and  the  response  to  all  of  these 
showed  that  while  the  number  of  people  in  our 
vicinity  caring  for  the  best  music  was  not  large, 
they  constituted  a  steady  and  appreciative  group. 
It  was  in  connection  with  these  first  choruses  that 
a  public-spirited  citizen  of  Chicago  oifered  a  prize 
for  the  best  labo^  song,  competition  to  be  open  to 
the  entire  country.  The  responses  to  the  offer 
literally  filled  three  large  barrels  and  speaking  at 
least  for  myself  as  one  of  the  bewildered  judges, 
we  were  more  disheartened  by  their  quality  than 
even  by  their  overwhelming  bulk.  Apparently 
the  workers  of  America  are  not  yet  ready  to  sing, 
although  I  recall  a  creditable  chorus  trained  at 
Hull-House  for  a  large  meeting  In  sympathy  with 
the  anthracite  coal  strike  In  which  the  swinging 

lines 

*'  Who  was  it  made  the  coal .? 
Our  God  as  well  as  theirs." 

seemed  to  relieve  the  tension  of  the  moment. 
Miss  Eleanor  Smith,  the  head  of  the  Hull-House 
Music  School,  who  had  put  the  words  to  music, 
performed  the  same  office  for  the  ''Sweatshop" 
of    the  Yiddish    poet,    the  translation    of    which 


378    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

presents  so  graphically  the  bewilderment  and 
tedium  of  the  New  York  shop  that  it  might  be 
applied  to  almost  any  other  machine  industry  as 
the  first  verse  indicates  :  — 

"  The  roaring  of  the  wheels  has  filled  my  ears, 
The  clashing  and  the  clamor  shut  me  in, 
Myself,  my  soul,  in  chaos  disappears, 
I  cannot  think  or  feel  amid  the  din." 

It  may  be  that  this  plaint  explains  the  lack  of 
labor  songs  in  this  period  of  industrial  malad- 
justment when  the  worker  is  overmastered  by  his 
very  tools.  In  addition  to  sharing  with  our  neigh- 
borhood the  best  music  we  could  procure,  we  have 
conscientiously  provided  careful  musical  instruc- 
tion that  at  least  a  few  young  people  might  under- 
stand those  old  usages  of  art;  that  they  might 
master  its  trade  secrets,  for  after  all  it  is  only 
through  a  careful  technique  that  artistic  ability 
can  express  itself  and  be  preserved. 

From  the .,  beginning  we  had  classes  in  music, 
and  the  Hull-House  Music  School,  which  is  housed 
in  quarters  of  its  own  in  our  quieter  court,  was 
opened  in  1893.  The  school  is  designed  to  give 
a  thorough  musical  instruction  to  a  limited  num- 
ber of  children.  From  the  first  lessons  they  are 
taught  to  compose  and  to  reduce  to  order  the 
musical  suggestions  which  may  come  to  them, 
and  in  this  wise  the  school  has  sometimes  been 
able  to  recover  the  songs  of  the  immigrants  through 
their   children.     Some   of   these   folk    songs    have 


ARTS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


379 


.,,  I 


mm 


38o    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

never  been  committed  to  paper,  but  have  survived 
through  the  centuries  because  of  a  touch  of  undy- 
ing poetry  which  the  world  has  always  cherished ; 
as  in  the  song  of  a  Russian  who  is  digging  a 
post  hole  and  finds  his  task  dull  and  difficult  until 
he  strikes,  a  stratum  of  red  sand,  which,  in  ad- 
dition to  making  digging  easy,  reminds  him  of  the 
red  hair  of  his  sweetheart,  and  all  goes  merrily  as 
the  song  lifts  into  a  joyous  melody.  I  recall 
again  the  almost  hilarious  enjoyment  of  the  adult 
audience  to  whom  it  was  sung  by  the  children 
who  had  revived  it,  as  well  as  the  more  sober 
appreciation  of  the  hymns  taken  from  the  lips  of 
the  cantor,  whose  father  before  him  had  officiated 
in  the  synagogue. 

The  recitals  and  concerts  given  by  the  school 
are  attended  by  large  and  appreciative  audiences. 
On  the  Sunday  before  Christmas  the  program  of 
Christmas  songs  draws  together  people  of  the  most 
diverging  faiths.  In  the  deep  tones  of  the  me- 
morial organ  erected  at  Hull-House,  we  realize 
that  music  is  perhaps  the  most  potent  agent  for 
making  the  universal  appeal  and  inducing  men  to 
forget  their  differences. 

Some  of  the  pupils  in  the  music  school  have 
developed  during  the  years  into  trained  musicians 
and  are  supporting  themselves  in  their  chosen 
profession.  On  the  other  hand,  we  constantly  see 
the  most  promising  musical  ability  extinguished 
when  the  young  people  enter  industries  which  so 


ARTS  AT  HULL-HOUSE  381 

sap  their  vitality  that  they  cannot  carry  on  serious 
study  in  the  scanty  hours  outside  of  factory  work. 
Many  cases  indisputably  illustrate  this  :  a  Bo- 
hemian girl,  who,  in  order  to  earn  money  for  press- 
ing family  needs,  first  ruined  her  voice  in  a  six 
months'  constant  vaudeville  engagement,  returned 
to  her  trade  working  overtime  in  a  vain  effort  to 
continue  the  vaudeville  income  ;  another  young  girl 
whom  Hull-House  had  sent  to  the  high  school  so 
long  as  her  parents  consented,  because  we  realized 
that  a  beautiful  voice  is  often  unavailable  through 
lack  of  the  informing  mind,  later  extinguished  her 
promise  in  a  tobacco  factory ;  a  third  girl  who 
had  supported  her  little  sisters  since  she  was 
fourteen,  eagerly  used  her  fine  voice  for  earning 
money  at  entertainments  held  late  after  her  day's 
work,  until  exposure  and  fatigue  ruined  her 
health  as  well  as  a  musician's  future ;  a  young 
man  whose  music-loving  family  gave  him  every 
possible  opportunity,  and  who  produced  some 
charming  and  even  joyous  songs  during  the  long 
struggle  with  tuberculosis  which  preceded  his 
death,  had  made  a  brave  beginning,  not  only  as  a 
teacher  of  music  but  as  a  composer.  In  the  little 
service  held  at  Hull-House  In  his  memory,  when 
the  children  sang  his  composition,  "How  Sweet  Is 
the  Shepherd's  Sweet  Lot,"  it  was  hard  to  realize 
that  such  an  interpretive  pastoral  could  have  been 
produced  by  one  whose  childhood  had  been  passed 
in  a  crowded  city  quarter. 


382     TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

Even  that  bitter  experience  did  not  prepare  us 
for  the  sorrowful  year  when  six  promising  pupils 
out  of  a  class  of  fifteen,  developed  tuberculosis. 
It  required  but  little  penetration  to  see  that  during 
the  eight  years  the  class  of  fifteen  school  children 
had  come  together  to  the  music  school,  they  had 
approximately  an  even  chance,  but  as  soon  as  they 
reached  the  legal  working  age  only  a  scanty  moiety 
of  those  who  became  self-supporting  could  endure 
the  strain  of  long  hours  and  bad  air.  Thus  the 
average  human  youth,  "With  all  the  sweetness 
of  the  common  dawn,"  is  flung  into  the  vortex  of 
industrial  life  wherein  the  everyday  tragedy  escapes 
us  save  when  one  of  them  becomes  conspicuously 
unfortunate.  Twice  in  one  year  we  were  com- 
pelled 

"To  find  the  inheritance  of  this  poor  child 
His  little  kingdom  of  a  forced  grave." 

It  has  been  pointed  out  many  times  that  Art 
lives  by  devouring  her  own  offspring  and  the 
world  has  come  to  justify  even  that  sacrifice,  but 
we  are  unfortified  and  unsolaced  when  we  see 
the  children  of  Art  devoured,  not  by  her,  but  by 
the  uncouth  stranger,  Modern  Industry,  who, 
needlessly  ruthless  and  brutal  to  her  own  children, 
is  quickly  fatal  to  the  offspring  of  the  gentler 
mother.  And  so  schools  in  art  for  those  who  go 
to  work  at  the  age  when  more  fortunate  young 
people  are  still  sheltered  and  educated,  constantly 
epitomize  one  of  the  haunting  problems  of  life; 


ARTS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


383 


why  do  we  permit  the  waste  of  this  most  precious 
human  faculty,  this  consummate  possession  of  civil- 
ization ?  When  we  fail  to  provide  the  vessel  in 
which  it  may  be  treasured,  it  runs  out  upon  the 
ground  and  is  irretrievably  lost. 

The   universal   desire   for  the   portrayal   of  life 
lying  quite  outside  of  personal  experience  evinces 


itself  in  many  forms.  One  of  the  conspicuous 
features  of  our  neighborhood,  as  of  all  industrial 
quarters,  is  the  persistency  with  which  the  entire 
population  attends  the  theater.  The  very  first 
day  I  saw  Halsted  Street  a  long  line  of  young 
men  and  boys  stood  outside  the  gallery  entrance 
of  the  Bijou  Theater,  waiting  for  the  Sunday 
matinee  to  begin  at  two  o'clock,  although  it  was 
only  high  noon.     This  waiting  crowd  might  have 


384    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

been  seen  every  Sunday  afternoon  during  the 
twenty  years  which  have  elapsed  since  then.  Our 
first  Sunday  evening  in  Hull-House,  when  a  group 
of  small  boys  sat  on  our  piazza  and  told  us  "about 
things  around  here,"  their  talk  was  all  of  the 
theater  and  of  the  astonishing  things  they  had 
seen  that  afternoon. 

But  quite  as  it  was  difficult  to  discover  the  habits 
and  purposes  of  this  group  of  boys  because  they 
much  preferred  talking  about  the  theater  to  contem- 
plating their  own  lives,  so  it  was  all  along  the 
line ;  the  young  men  told  us  their  ambitions  in  the 
phrases  of  stage  heroes,  and  the  girls,  so  far  as  their 
romantic  dreams  could  be  shyly  put  into  words, 
possessed  no  others  but  those  soiled  by  long  use 
in  the  melodrama.  All  of  these  young  people 
looked  upon  an  afternoon  a  week  in  the  gallery  of 
a  Halsted  Street  theater  as  their  one  opportunity 
to  see  life.  The  sort  of  melodrama  they  see  there 
has  recently  been  described  as  "the  ten  command- 
ments written  in  red  fire."  Certainly  the  villain 
always  comes  to  a  violent  end,  and  the  young  and 
handsome  hero  is  rewarded  by  marriage  with  a 
beautiful  girl,  usually  the  daughter  of  a  millionaire, 
but  after  all  that  is  not  a  portrayal  of  the  morality 
of  the  ten  commandments  any  more  than  of  life 
itself. 

Nevertheless  the  theater,  such  as  it  was,  appeared 
to  be  the  one  agency  which  freed  the  boys  and  girls 
from  that  destructive  isolation  of  those  who  drag 


ARTS  AT  HULL-HOUSE  385 

themselves  up  to  maturity  by  themselves,  and  it 
gave  them  a  glimpse  of  that  order  and  beauty  into 
which  even  the  poorest  drama  endeavors  to  restore 
the  bewildering  facts  of  life.  The  most  prosaic 
young  people  bear  testimony  to  this  overmastering 
desire.  A  striking  illustration  of  this  came  to  us 
during  our  second  year's  residence  on  Halsted 
Street  through  an  incident  in  the  Italian  colony, 
where  the  men  have  always  boasted  that  they  were 
able  to  guard  their  daughters  from  the  dangers  of 
city  life,  and  until  evil  Italians  entered  the  business 
of  the  ''white  slave  traffic,"  their  boast  was  well 
founded.  The  first  Italian  girl  to  go  astray  known 
to  the  residents  of  Hull-House,  w^as  so  fascinated 
by  the  stage  that  on  her  way  home  from  work 
she  always  loitered  outside  a  theater  before  the  en- 
ticing posters.  Three  months  after  her  elopement 
with  an  actor,  her  distracted  mother  received  a 
picture  of  her  dressed  in  the  men's  clothes  in  which 
she  appeared  in  vaudeville.  Her  family  mourned 
her  as  dead  and  her  name  was  never  mentioned 
among  them  nor  in  the  entire  colony.  In  further 
illustration  of  an  overmastering  desire  to  see  life  as 
portrayed  on  the  stage  are  two  young  girls  whose 
sober  parents  did  not  approve  of  the  theater  and 
would  allow  no  money  for  such  foolish  purposes. 
In  sheer  desperation  the  sisters  evolved  a  plot  that 
one  of  them  would  feign  a  toothache,  and  while  she 
was  having  her  tooth  pulled  by  a  neighboring  den- 
tist the  other  would  steal  the  gold  crowns  from  his 
2  c 


386    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

table,  and  with  the  money  thus  procured  they  could 
attend  the  vaudeville  theater  every  night  on  their 
way  home  from  work.  Apparently  the  pain  and 
wrongdoing  did  not  weigh  for  a  moment  against 
the  anticipated  pleasure.  The  plan  was  carried  out 
to  the  point  of  selling  the  gold  crowns  to  a  pawn- 
broker when  the  disappointed  girls  were  arrested. 

All  this  effort  to  see  the  play  took  place  in  the 
years  before  the  five-cent  theaters  had  become  a 
feature  of  every  crowded  city  thoroughfare  and 
before  their  popularity  had  induced  the  attendance 
of  two  and  a  quarter  million  people  in  the  United 
States  every  twenty-four  hours.  The  eagerness  of 
the  penniless  children  to  get  into  these  magic 
spaces  is  responsible  for  an  entire  crop  of  petty 
crimes  made  more  easy  because  two  children  are 
admitted  for  one  nickel  at  the  last  performance 
when  the  hour  is  late  and  the  theater  nearly  de- 
serted. The  Hull-House  residents  were  aghast 
at  the  early  popularity  of  these  mimic  shows, 
and  in  the  days  before  the  inspection  of  films  and 
the  present  regulations  for  the  five-cent  theaters 
we  established  at  Hull-House  a  moving  picture 
show.  Although  its  success  justified  its  existence, 
it  was  so  obviously  but  one  in  the  midst  of  hundreds 
that  it  seemed  much  more  advisable  to  turn  our 
attention  to  the  improvement  of  all  of  them  or 
rather  to  assist  as  best  we  could,  the  successful 
efforts  in  this  direction  by  the  Juvenile  Protective 
Association. 


ARTS  AT  HULL-HOUSE  387 

However,  long  before  the  five-cent  theater  was 
even  heard  of,  we  had  accumulated  much  testimony 
as  to  the  power  of  the  drama,  and  we  would  have 
been  dull  indeed  if  we  had  not  availed  ourselves  of 
the  use  of  the  play  at  Hull-House,  not  only  as  an 
agent  of  recreation  and  education,  but  as  a  vehicle 
of  self-expression  for  the  teeming  young  life  all 
about  us. 

Long  before  the  Hull-House  theater  was  built 
we  had  many  plays,  first  in  the  drawing-room  and 
later  in  the  gymnasium.  The  young  people's 
clubs  never  tired  of  rehearsing  and  preparing  for 
these  dramatic  occasions,  and  we  also  discovered 
that  older  people  were  almost  equally  ready  and 
talented.  We  quickly  learned  that  no  celebration 
at  Thanksgiving  was  so  popular  as  a  graphic  por- 
trayal on  the  stage  of  the  Pilgrim  Fathers,  and  we 
were  often  put  to  it  to  reduce  to  dramatic  effects 
the  great  days  of  patriotism  and  religion. 

At  one  of  our  early  Christmas  celebrations 
Longfellow's  ''Golden  Legend"  was  given,  the 
actors  portraying  it  with  the  touch  of  the  miracle 
play  spirit  which  it  reflects.  I  remember  an  old 
blind  man,  who  took  the  part  of  a  shepherd,  said, 
at  the  end  of  the  last  performance,  "Kind  Heart," 
a  name  by  which  he  always  addressed  me,  "it 
seems  to  me  that  I  have  been  waiting  all  my  life 
to  hear  some  of  these  things  said.  I  am  glad  we 
had  so  many  performances,  for  I  think  I  can  re- 
member them  to  the  end.     It  is  getting  hard  for 


388    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

me  to  listen  to  reading,  but  the  different  voices  and 
all  made  this  very  plain."  Had  he  not  perhaps 
made  a  legitimate  demand  upon  the  drama,  that 
It  shall  express  for  us  that  which  we  have  not  been 
able  to  formulate  for  ourselves,  that  It  shall  warm 
us  with  a  sense  of  companionship  with  the  experi- 
ences of  others ;  does  not  every  genuine  drama 
present  our  relations  to  each  other  and  to  the  world 
In  which  we  find  ourselves  In  such  wise  as  may 
fortify  us  to  the  end  of  the  journey  ? 

The  Immigrants  In  the  neighborhood  of  Hull- 
House  have  utilized  our  little  stage  In  an  endeavor 
to  reproduce  the  past  of  their  own  nations  through 
those  Immortal  dramas  which  have  escaped  from 
the  restraining  bond  of  one  country  Into  the  land 
of  the  universal. 

A  large  colony  of  Greeks  near  Hull-House,  who 
often  feel  that  their  history  and  classic  back- 
ground are  completely  Ignored  by  Americans, 
and  that  they  are  easily  confused  with  the  more 
Ignorant  Immigrants  from  other  parts  of  south- 
eastern Europe,  welcome  an  occasion  to  present 
Greek  plays  In  the  ancient  text.  With  expert 
help  In  the  difiicultles  of  staging  and  rehearsing  a 
classic  play,  they  reproduced  the  Ajaxof  Sophocles 
upon  the  Hull-House  stage.  It  was  a  genuine 
triumph  to  the  actors  who  felt  that  they  were 
"showing  forth  the  glory  of  Greece"  to  "Ignorant 
Americans."  The  scholar  who  came  with  a  copy 
of  Sophocles  in  hand  and  followed  the  play  with 


ARTS  AT  HULL-HOUSE  389 

real  enjoyment,  did  not  in  the  least  realize  that  the 
revelation  of  the  love  of  Greek  poets  was  mutual 
between  the  audience  and  the  actors.  The  Greeks 
have  quite  recently  assisted  an  enthusiast  in  pro- 
ducing "Electra,"  while  the  Lithuanians,  the 
Poles,  and  other  Russian  subjects  often  use  the 
Hull-House  stage  to  present  plays  in  their  own 
tongue,  which  shall  at  one  and  the  same  time 
keep  alive  their  sense  of  participation  in  the  great 
Russian  revolution  and  relieve  their  feelings  in 
regard  to  it.  There  is  something  still  more  appeal- 
ing in  the  yearning  efforts  the  immigrants  some- 
times make  to  formulate  their  situation  in  America. 
I  recall  a  play  written  by  an  Italian  playwright  of 
our  neighborhood,  which  depicted  the  insolent 
break  between  Americanized  sons  and  old  coun- 
try parents,  so  touchingly  that  it  moved  to  tears 
all  the  older  Italians  in  the  audience.  Did  the 
tears  of  each  express  relief  in  finding  that  others 
had  had  the  same  experience  as  himself,  and  did 
the  knowledge  free  each  one  from  a  sense  of  isola- 
tion and  an  injured  belief  that  his  children  were 
the  worst  of  all  ^ 

This  effort  to  understand  life  through  its  dra- 
matic portrayal,  to  see  one's  own  participation 
intelligibly  set  forth,  becomes  difficult  when  one 
enters  the  field  of  social  development,  but  even 
here  it  is  not  impossible  if  a  Settlement  group  is 
constantly  searching  for  new  material. 

A  labor  story  appearing  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly 


390    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL^HOUSE 

was  kindly  dramatized  for  us  by  the  author  who 
also  superintended  its  presentation  upon  the 
Hull-House  stage.  The  little  drama  presented  the 
untutored  effort  of  a  trades-union  man  to  secure 
for  his  side  the  beauty  of  self-sacrifice,  the  glamour 
of  martyrdom,  which  so  often  seems  to  belong 
solely  to  the  nonunion  forces.  The  presentation 
of  the  play  was  attended  by  an  audience  of  trades- 
unionists  and  employers  and  those  other  people 
who  are  supposed  to  make  public  opinion.  To- 
gether they  felt  the  moral  beauty  of  the  man's 
conclusion  that  "it's  the  side  that  suffers  most 
that  will  win  out  in  this  war  —  the  saints  is  the 
only  ones  that  has  got  the  world  under  their  feet 
—  we've  got  to  do  the  way  they  done  if  the  unions 
is  to  stand,"  so  completely  that  it  seemed  quite 
natural  that  he  should  forfeit  his  life  upon  the 
truth  of  this  statement. 

The  dramatic  arts  have  gradually  been  de- 
veloped at  Hull-House  through  amateur  com- 
panies, one  of  which  has  held  together  for  more 
than  fifteen  years.  The  members  were  originally 
selected  from  the  young  people  who  had  evinced 
talent  in  the  plays  the  social  clubs  were  always 
giving,  but  the  association  now  adds  to  itself  only 
as  a  vacancy  occurs.  Some  of  them  have  de- 
veloped almost  a  professional  ability,  although 
contrary  to  all  predictions  and  in  spite  of  several 
offers,  none  of  them  have  taken  to  a  stage  career. 
They  present  all  sorts  of  plays  from  melodrama 


ARTS  AT  HULL-HOUSE  391 

and  comedy  to  those  of  Shaw,  Ibsen,  and  Gals- 
worthy. The  latter  are  surprisingly  popular,  per- 
haps because  of  their  sincere  attempt  to  expose 
the  shams  and  pretenses  of  contemporary  life  and 
to  penetrate  into  some  of  its  perplexing  social  and 
domestic  situations.  Through  such  plays  the 
stage  may  become  a  pioneer  teacher  of  social 
righteousness. 

I  have  come  to  believe,  however,  that  the  stage 
may  do  more  than  teach,  that  much  of  our  current 
moral  instruction  will  not  endure  the  test  of  being 
cast  into  a  lifelike  mold,  and  when  presented  in 
dramatic  form  will  reveal  itself  as  platitudinous 
and  eifete.  That  which  may  have  sounded  like 
righteous  teaching  when  it  was  remote  and  wordy, 
will  be  challenged  afresh  when  it  is  obliged  to 
simulate  life  itself. 

This  function  of  the  stage,  as  a  reconstructing 
and  reorganizing  agent  of  accepted  moral  truths, 
came  to  me  with  overwhelming  force  as  I  listened 
to  the  Passion  Play  at  Oberammergau  one  beau- 
tiful summer's  day  in  1900.  The  peasants  who 
portrayed  exactly  the  successive  scenes  of  the 
wonderful  Life,  who  used  only  the  very  words 
found  in  the  accepted  version  of  the  Gospels,  yet 
curiously  modernized  and  reorientated  the  mes- 
sage. They  made  clear  that  the  opposition  to  the 
young  Teacher  sprang  from  the  merchants  whose 
traiBc  in  the  temple  He  had  disturbed  and  from 
the  Pharisees  who  were  dependent  upon  them  for 


392    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

support.  Their  query  was  curiously  familiar,  as 
they  demanded  the  antecedents  of  the  Radical 
who  dared  to  touch  vested  interests,  who  presumed 
to  dictate  the  morality  of  trade,  and  who  insulted 
the  marts  of  honest  merchants  by  calling  them 
"a.  den  of  thieves."  As  the  play  developed,  it 
became  clear  that  this  powerful  opposition  had 
friends  in  Church  and  State,  that  they  controlled 
influences  which  ramified  in  all  directions.  They 
obviously  believed  in  their  statement  of  the  case 
and  their  very  wealth  and  position  in  the  com- 
munity gave  their  words  such  weight  that  finally 
all  of  their  hearers  were  convinced  that  the  young 
Agitator  must  be  done  away  with  in  order  that 
the  highest  interests  of  society  might  be  con- 
served. These  simple  peasants  made  it  clear  that 
it  was  the  money  power  which  induced  one  of  the 
Agitator's  closest  friends  to  betray  him,  and  the 
villain  of  the  piece,  Judas  himself,  was  only  a 
man  who  was  so  dazzled  by  money,  so  under  the 
domination  of  all  it  represented,  that  he  was 
perpetually  blind  to  the  spiritual  vision  unrolling 
before  him.  As  I  sat  through  the  long  summer 
day,  seeing  the  shadows  on  the  beautiful  moun- 
tain back  of  the  open  stage  shift  from  one  side  to 
the  other  and  finally  grow  long  and  pointed  in 
the  soft  evening  light,  my  mind  was  filled  with 
perplexing  questions.  Did  the  dramatization  of 
the  life  of  Jesus  set  forth  its  meaning  more  clearly 
and  conclusively  than  talking  and  preaching  could 


ARTS  AT  HULL-HOUSE  393 

possibly  do  as  a  shadowy  following  of  the  com- 
mand ''to  do  the  will"  ? 

The  peasant  actors  whom  I  had  seen  returning 
from  mass  that  morning  had  prayed  only  to  por- 
tray the  life  as  He  had  lived  it  and,  behold,  out  of 
their  simplicity  and  piety  arose  this  modern  version 
which  even  Harnack  was  only  then  venturing  to 
suggest  to  his  advanced  colleagues  in  Berlin.  Yet 
the  Oberammergau  folk  were  very  like  thousands 
of  immigrant  men  and  women  of  Chicago,  both  in 
their  experiences  and  in  their  familiarity  with  the 
hard  facts  of  life,  and  throughout  that  day  as  my 
mind  dwelt  on  my  far-away  neighbors,  I  was  re- 
proached with  the  sense  of  an  ungarnered  harvest. 

Of  course  such  a  generally  uplifted  state  comes 
only  at  rare  moments,  while  the  development  of 
the  little  theater  at  Hull-House  has  not  depended 
upon  the  moods  of  any  one,  but  upon  the  genuine 
enthusiasm  and  sustained  effort  of  a  group  of  resi- 
dents, several  of  them  artists  who  have  ungrudg- 
ingly given  their  time  to  it  year  after  year.  This 
group  has  long  fostered  junior  dramatic  associa- 
tions, through  which  it  seems  possible  to  give  a 
training  in  manners  and  morals  more  directly  than 
through  any  other  medium.  They  have  learned  to 
determine  very  cleverly  the  ages  at  which  various 
types  of  the  drama  are  most  congruous  and  expres- 
sive of  the  sentiments  of  the  little  troupes,  from  the 
fairy  plays  such  as  ''Snow-White"  and  "Puss-in- 
Boots"  which  appeal  to  the  youngest  children,  to 


394    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

the  heroic  plays  of  ''William  Tell,"  "King  John,'* 
and  ''Wat  Tyler"  for  the  older  lads,  and  to  the 
romances  and  comedies  which  set  forth  in  stately 
fashion  the  elaborated  life  which  so  many  young 
people  admire.  A  group  of  Jewish  boys  gave  a 
dramatic  version  of  the  story  of  Joseph  and  his 
brethren  and  again  of  Queen  Esther.  They  had 
almost  a  sense  of  proprietorship  in  the  fine  old  lines 
and  were  pleased  to  bring  from  home  bits  of  Tal- 
mudic  lore  for  the  stage  setting.  The  same  club  of 
boys  at  one  time  will  buoyantly  give  a  roaring  com- 
edy and  five  years  later  will  solemnly  demand  a 
/drama  dealing  with  modern  industrial  conditions. 
The  Hull-House  theater  is  also  rented  from  time  to 
time  to  members  of  the  Young  People's  Socialist 
League  who  give  plays  both  in  Yiddish  and  English 
which  reduce  their  propaganda  to  conversation. 
Through  such  humble  experiments  as  the  Hull- 
House  stage,  as  well  as  through  the  more  ambitious 
reforms  which  are  attempted  in  various  parts  of 
the  country,  the  theater  may  at  last  be  restored  to 
its  rightful  place  in  the  community. 

There  have  been  times  when  our  little  stage  was 
able  to  serve  the  theatre  lihre.  A  Chicago  troupe, 
finding  it  difficult  to  break  into  a  trust  theater, 
used  it  one  winter  twice  a  week  for  the  presenta- 
tion of  Ibsen  and  old  French  comedy.  A  visit 
from  the  Irish  poet  Yeats  inspired  us  to  do  our 
share  towards  freeing  the  stage  from  its  slavery  to 
expensive  scene  setting,  and  a  forest  of  stiflF  con- 


ARTS   AT  HULL-HOUSE  395 

ventional  trees  against  a  gilt  sky  still  remains  with 
us  as  a  reminder  of  an  attempt  not  wholly  unsuc- 
cessful, in  this  direction. 

This  group  of  Hull-House  artists  have  filled  our 
little  foyer  with  a  series  of  charming  playbills  and 
by  dint  of  painting  their  own  scenery  and  making 
their  own  costumes  have  obtained  beguiling  re- 
sults in  stage  setting.  Sometimes  all  the  artistic 
resources  of  the  House  unite  in  a  Wagnerian  combi- 
nation; thus  the  text  of  the  ''Troll's  Holiday"  was 
written  by  one  resident,  set  to  music  by  another ; 
sung  by  the  Music  School,  and  placed  upon  the 
stage  under  the  careful  direction  and  training  of 
the  dramatic  committee ;  and  the  little  brown 
trolls  could  never  have  tumbled  about  so  grace- 
fully in  their  gleaming  caves  unless  they  had  been 
taught  in  the  gymnasium. 

Some  such  synthesis  takes  place  every  year  at 
the  Hull-House  annual  exhibition,  when  an  effort 
is  made  to  bring  together  in  a  spirit  of  holiday  the 
nine  thousand  people  who  come  to  the  House  every 
week  during  duller  times.  Curiously  enough  the 
central  feature  at  the  annual  exhibition  seems  to  be 
the  brass  band  of  the  boys'  club  which  apparently 
dominates  the  situation  by  sheer  size  and  noise,  but 
perhaps  their  fresh  boyish  enthusiasm  expresses 
that  which  the  older  people  take  more  soberly. 

As  the  stage  of  our  little  theater  had  attempted  to 
portray  the  heroes  of  many  lands,  so  we  planned 
one  early  spring  seven  years  ago,  to  carry  out  a 


396    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

scheme  of  mural  decoration  upon  the  walls  of  the 
theater  itself,  which  should  portray  those  cosmo- 
politan heroes  who  have  become  great  through 
identification  with  the  common  lot,  in  preference 
to  the  heroes  of  mere  achievement.  In  addition  to 
the  group  of  artists  living  at  Hull-House  several 
others  were  in  temporary  residence,  and  they  all 
threw  themselves  enthusiastically  into  the  plan. 
The  series  began  with  Tolstoy  plowing  his  field 
which  was  painted  by  an  artist  of  the  Glasgow 
school,  and  the  next  was  of  the  young  Lincoln 
pushing  his  flatboat  down  the  Mississippi  River 
at  the  moment  he  received  his  first  impression  of 
the  "great  iniquity."  This  was  done  by  a  promis- 
ing young  artist  of  Chicago,  and  the  wall  spaces 
nearest  to  the  two  selected  heroes  were  quickly 
filled  with  their  immortal  sayings. 

A  spirited  discussion  thereupon  ensued  in  regard 
to  the  heroes  for  the  two  remaining  large  wall 
spaces,  when  to  the  surprise  of  all  of  us  the  group 
of  twenty-five  residents  who  had  lived  in  un- 
broken harmony  for  more  than  ten  years,  suddenly 
broke  up  into  cults  and  even  camps  of  hero  wor- 
ship. Each  cult  exhibited  drawings  of  its  own 
hero  in  his  most  heroic  moment,  and  of  course 
each  drawing  received  enthusiastic  backing  from 
the  neighborhood,  each  according  to  the  nation- 
ality of  the  hero.  Thus  Phidias  standing  high  on 
his  scaffold  as  he  finished  the  heroic  head  of 
Athene;    the  young  David  dreamily  playing  his 


ARTS   AT  HULL-HOUSE  397 

harp  as  he  tended  his  father's  sheep  at  Bethle- 
hem ;  St.  Francis  washing  the  feet  of  the  leper ; 
the  young  slave  Patrick  guiding  his  master  through 
the  bogs  of  Ireland,  which  he  later  rid  of  their 
dangers ;  the  poet  Hans  Sachs  cobbling  shoes ; 
Jeanne  d'Arc  dropping  her  spindle  in  startled  won- 
der before  the  heavenly  visitants,  naturally  all 
obtained  such  enthusiastic  following  from  our 
cosmopolitan  neighborhood  that  it  was  certain  to 
give  offense  if  any  two  were  selected.  Then  there 
was  the  cult  of  residents  who  wished  to  keep  the 
series  contemporaneous  w4th  the  two  heroes  al- 
ready painted,  and  they  advocated  William  Morris 
at  his  loom,  Walt  Whitman  tramping  the  open 
road,  Pasteur  in  his  laboratory,  or  Florence  Night- 
ingale seeking  the  wounded  on  the  field  of  battle. 
But  beyond  the  socialists,  few  of  the  neighbors 
had  heard  of  William  Morris,  and  the  fame  of  Walt 
Whitman  was  still  more  apocryphal ;  Pasteur 
was  considered  merely  a  clever  scientist  without 
the  romance  which  evokes  popular  affection  and 
in  the  provisional  drawing  submitted  for  votes, 
gentle  Florence  Nightingale  was  said  "to  look 
more  as  if  she  were  robbing  the  dead  than  succor- 
ing the  wounded."  The  remark  shows  how  high  the 
feeling  ran,  and  then,  as  something  must  be  done 
quickly,  we  tried  to  unite  upon  strictly  local  heroes 
such  as  the  famous  fire  marshal  who  had  lived 
for  many  years  in  our  neighborhood,  —  but  why 
prolong  this  description  which  demonstrates  once 


398    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


more  that  art,  if  not  always  the  handmaid  of 
religion,  yet  insists  upon  serving  those  deeper 
sentiments  for  which  we  unexpectedly  find  our- 
selves ready  to  fight.  When  we  were  all  fatigued 
and  hopeless  of  compromise,  we  took  refuge  in  a 


>--i  VV 


■a   Kft: 


--^.gm 


series  of  landscapes  connected  with  our  two  heroes 
by  a  quotation  from  Wordsworth  slightly  dis- 
torted to  meet  our  dire  need,  but  still  stating  his 
impassioned  belief  in  the  efficacious  spirit  capable 
of  companionship  with  man  which  resides  in 
"particular     spots."     Certainly    peace     emanates 


ARTS   AT  HULL-HOUSE  399 

from  the  particular  folding  of  the  hills  in  one  of 
our  treasured  mural  landscapes,  yet  occasionally 
when  a  guest  with  a  bewildered  air  looks  from  one 
side  of  the  theater  to  the  other,  we  are  forced  to 
conclude  that  the  connection  is  not  convincing. 

In  spite  of  its  stormy  career  this  attempt  at 
mural  decoration  connects  itself  quite  naturally 
with  the  spirit  of  our  earlier  efforts  to  make  Hull- 
House  as  beautiful  as  we  could,  which  had  in  it  a 
desire  to  embody  in  the  outward  aspect  of  the 
House  something  of  the  reminiscence  and  aspira- 
tion of  the  neighborhood  life. 

As  the  House  enlarged  for  new  needs  and 
mellowed  through  slow-growing  associations,  we 
endeavored  to  fashion  it  from  without,  as  it  were, 
as  well  as  from  within.  A  tiny  wall  fountain 
modeled  in  classic  pattern,  for  us  penetrates  into 
the  world  of  the  past,  but  for  the  Italian  immi- 
grant it  may  defy  distance  and  barriers  as  he 
dimly  responds  to  that  typical  beauty  in  which 
Italy  has  ever  written  its  message,  even  as  classic 
art  knew  no  region  of  the  gods  which  was  not  also 
sensuous,  and  as  the  art  of  Dante  mysteriously 
blended  the  material  and  the  spiritual. 

Perhaps  the  early  devotion  of  the  Hull-House 
residents  to  the  pre-Raphaelites  recognized  that 
they  above  all  English  speaking  poets  and  painters 
reveal  "the  sense  of  the  expressiveness  of  out- 
ward things"  which  is  at  once  the  glory  and  the 
limitation  of  the  arts. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

Echoes  of  the  Russian  Revolution 

The  residents  of  Hull-House  have  always  seen 
many  evidences  of  the  Russian  Revolution ;  a 
forlorn  family  of  little  children  whose  parents 
have  been  massacred  at  Kishinev  are  received  and 
supported  by  their  relatives  in  our  Chicago  neigh- 
borhood ;  or  a  Russian  woman,  her  face  streaming 
with  tears  of  indignation  and  pity,  asks  you  to 
look  at  the  scarred  back  of  her  sister,  a  young 
girl,  who  has  escaped  with  her  life  from  the  whips 
of  the  Cossack  soldiers ;  or  a  studious  young 
woman  suddenly  disappears  from  the  Hull-House 
classes  because  she  has  returned  to  Kiev  to  be 
near  her  brother  while  he  is  in  prison,  that  she 
may  earn  money  for  the  nourishing  food  which 
alone  will  keep  him  from  contracting  tuberculosis  ; 
or  we  attend  a  protest  meeting  against  the  newest 
outrages  of  the  Russian  government  in  which  the 
speeches  are  interrupted  by  the  groans  of  those 
whose  sons  have  been  sacrified  and  by  the  hisses 
of  others  who  cannot  repress  their  indignation. 
At  such  moments  an  American  is  acutely  con- 
scious of  our  ignorance  of  this  greatest  tragedy  of 
modern    times,    and    at    our    indifference    to    the 

400 


ECHOES   OF   RUSSIAN   REVOLUTION    401 


402    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

waste  of  perhaps  the  noblest  human  material 
among  our  contemporaries.  Certain  it  is,  as  the 
distinguished  Russian  revolutionists  have  come  to 
Chicago,  they  have  impressed  me,  as  no  one  else 
ever  has  done,  as  belonging  to  that  noble  com- 
pany of  martyrs  who  have  ever  and  again  poured 
forth  blood  that  human  progress  might  be  ad- 
vanced. Sometimes  these  men  and  women  have 
addressed  audiences  gathered  quite  outside  the 
Russian  colony  and  have  filled  to  overflowing 
Chicago's  largest  halls  with  American  citizens 
deeply  touched  by  this  message  of  martyrdom. 
One  significant  meeting  was  addressed  by  a  mem- 
ber of  the  Russian  Duma  and  by  one  of  Russia's 
oldest  and  sanest  revolutionists ;  another  by 
Madame  Breshkovsky,  who  later  languished  a 
prisoner  in  the  fortress  of  St.  Peter  and  St.  Paul. 

In  this  wonderful  procession  of  revolutionists. 
Prince  Kropotkin,  or,  as  he  prefers  to  be  called, 
Peter  Kropotkin,  was  doubtless  the  most  dis- 
tinguished. When  he  came  to  America  to  lecture, 
he  was  heard  throughout  the  country  with  great 
interest  and  respect ;  that  he  was  a  guest  of  Hull- 
House  during  his  stay  in  Chicago  attracted  little 
attention  at  the  time,  but  two  years  later,  when  the 
assassination  of  President  McKinley  occurred,  the 
visit  of  this  kindly  scholar,  who  had  always  called 
himself  an  ''anarchist"  and  had  certainly  written 
fiery  tracts  in  his  younger  manhood,  was  made  the 
basis   of  an   attack   upon  Hull-House  by  a  daily 


ECHOES  OF  RUSSIAN  REVOLUTION    403 

newspaper,  which  ignored  the  fact  that  while 
Prince  Kropotkin  had  addressed  the  Chicago  Arts 
and  Crafts  Society  at  Hull-House,  giving  a  digest 
of  his  remarkable  book  on  ''Fields,  Factories,  and 
Workshops,"  he  had  also  spoken  at  the  State  Uni- 
versities of  Illinois  and  Wisconsin  and  before  the 
leading  literary  and  scientific  societies  of  Chicago. 
These  institutions  and  societies  were  not,  therefore, 
called  anarchistic.  Hull-House  had  doubtless  laid 
itself  open  to  this  attack  through  an  incident  con- 
nected with  the  imprisonment  of  the  editor  of  an 
anarchistic  paper,  who  was  arrested  in  Chicago 
immediately  after  the  assassination  of  President 
McKinley.  In  the  excitement  following  the  na- 
tional calamity  and  the  avowal  by  the  assassin  of 
the  influence  of  the  anarchistic  lecture  to  which  he 
had  listened,  arrests  were  made  in  Chicago  of  every 
one  suspected  of  anarchy,  in  the  belief  that  a  wide- 
spread plot  would  be  uncovered.  The  editor's 
house  was  searched  for  incriminating  literature,  his 
wife  and  daughter  taken  to  a  police  station,  and 
his  son  and  himself,  with  several  other  suspected 
anarchists,  were  placed  in  the  disused  cells  in  the 
basement  of  the  city  hall. 

It  is  impossible  to  overstate  the  public  excite- 
ment of  the  moment  and  the  unfathomable  sense 
of  horror  with  which  the  community  regarded  an 
attack  upon  the  chief  executive  of  the  nation,  as  a 
crime  against  government  itself  which  compels 
an  instinctive  recoil  from  all  law-abiding  citizens. 


404    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

Doubtless  both  the  horror  and  recoil  have  their 
roots  deep  down  in  human  experience ;  the  earliest 
forms  of  government  implied  a  group  which  offered 
competent  resistance  to  outsiders,  but  assuming 
no  protection  was  necessary  between  any  two  of  its 
own  members,  promptly  punished  with  death  the 
traitor  who  had  assaulted  any  one  within.  An 
anarchistic  attack  against  an  official  thus  furnishes 
an  accredited  basis  both  for  unreasoning  hatred  and 
for  prompt  punishment.  Both  the  hatred  and  the 
determination  to  punish  reached  the  highest  pitch 
in  Chicago  after  the  assassination  of  President 
McKinley,  and  the  group  of  wretched  men  detained 
in  the  old-fashioned,  scarcely  habitable  cells,  had 
not  the  least  idea  of  their  ultimate  fate.  They  were 
not  allowed  to  see  an  attorney  and  were  kept  ''in 
communicado"  as  their  excited  friends  called  it. 
I  had  seen  the  editor  and  his  family  only  during 
Prince  Kropotkin's  stay  at  Hull-House,  when  they 
had  come  to  visit  him  several  times.  The  editor 
had  impressed  me  as  a  quiet,  scholarly  man,  chal- 
lenging the  social  order  by  the  philosophic  touch- 
stone of  Bakunin  and  of  Herbert  Spencer,  somewhat 
startled  by  the  radicalism  of  his  fiery  young  son  and 
much  comforted  by  the  German  domesticity  of  his 
wife  and  daughter.  Perhaps  it  was  but  my  hys- 
terical symptom  of  the  universal  excitement,  but 
it  certainly  seemed  to  me  more  than  I  could  bear 
when  a  group  of  his  individualistic  friends,  who  had 
come  to  ask  for  help,  said  :  ''You  see  what  becomes 


ECHOES  OF  RUSSIAN  REVOLUTION    405 

of  your  boasted  law ;  the  authorities  won't  even 
allow  an  attorney,  nor  will  they  accept  bail  for  these 
men,  against  whom  nothing  can  be  proved,  al- 
though the  veriest  criminals  are  not  denied  such  a 
right."  Challenged  by  an  anarchist,  one  is  always 
sensitive  for  the  honor  of  legally  constituted  society, 
and  I  replied  that  of  course  the  men  could  have  an 
attorney,  that  the  assassin  himself  would  eventually 
be  furnished  with  one,  that  the  fact  that  a  man  was 
an  anarchist  had  nothing  to  do  with  his  rights  be- 
fore the  law  !  I  was  met  with  the  retort  that  that 
might  do  for  a  theory,  but  that  the  fact  still  re- 
mained that  these  men  had  been  absolutely  iso- 
lated, seeing  no  one  but  policemen,  who  constantly 
frightened  them  with  tales  of  public  clamor  and 
threatened  lynching. 

This  conversation  took  place  on  Saturday  night 
and,  as  the  final  police  authority  rests  in  the  mayor, 
with  a  friend  who  was  equally  disturbed  over  the 
situation,  I  repaired  to  his  house  on  Sunday  morn- 
ing to  appeal  to  him  in  the  interest  of  a  law  and 
order  that  should  not  yield  to  panic.  We  con- 
tended that  to  the  anarchist  above  all  men  It  must 
be  demonstrated  that  law  Is  impartial  and  stands 
the  test  of  every  strain.  The  mayor  heard  us 
through  with  the  ready  sympathy  of  the  successful 
politician.  He  insisted,  however,  that  the  men 
thus  far  had  merely  been  properly  protected  against 
lynching,  but  that  it  might  now  be  safe  to  allow 
them  to  see  some  one ;   he  would  not  yet,  however, 


4o6   TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

take  the  responsibility  of  permitting  an  attorney, 
but  if  I  myself  chose  to  see  them  on  the  humani- 
tarian errand  of  an  assurance  of  fair  play,  he  would 
write  me  a  permit  at  once.  I  promptly  fell  into  the 
trap,  if  trap  it  was,  and  within  half  an  hour  was 
in  a  corridor  in  the  city  hall  basement,  talking 
to  the  distracted  editor  and  surrounded  by  a  cordon 
of  police,  who  assured  me  that  it  was  not  safe  to  per- 
mit him  out  of  his  cell.  The  editor,  who  had  grown 
thin  and  haggard  under  his  suspense,  asked  imme- 
diately as  to  the  whereabouts  of  his  wife  and 
daughter,  concerning  whom  he  had  heard  not  a 
word  since  he  had  seen  them  arrested.  Gradually 
he  became  composed  as  he  learned,  not  that  his 
testimony  had  been  believed  to  the  effect  that  he 
had  never  seen  the  assassin  but  once,  and  had 
then  considered  him  a  foolish  half-witted  creature, 
but  that  the  most  thoroughgoing  ''dragnet"  in- 
vestigations on  the  part  of  the  united  police  of 
the  country  had  failed  to  discover  a  plot  and  that 
the  public  was  gradually  becoming  convinced  that 
the  dastardly  act  was  that  of  a  solitary  man  with 
no  political  or  social  affiliations. 

The  entire  conversation  was  simple  and  did  not 
seem  to  me  unlike.  In  motive  or  character,  interviews 
I  had  had  with  many  another  forlorn  man  who  had 
fallen  into  prison.  I  had  scarce  returned  to  Hull- 
House,  however,  before  it  was  filled  with  reporters, 
and  I  at  once  discovered  that  whether  or  not  I 
had  helped  a  brother  out  of  a  pit,  I  had  fallen  into  a 


ECHOES   OF  RUSSIAN  REVOLUTION    407 

deep  one  myself.  A  period  of  sharp  public  oppro- 
brium followed,  traces  of  which,  I  suppose,  will 
always  remain.  And  yet  In  the  midst  of  the  letters 
of  protest  and  accusation  which  made  my  mall  a 
horror  every  mornln;^  came  a  few  letters  of  another 
sort,  one  from  a  federal  judge  whom  I  had  never 
seen  and  another  from  a  distinguished  professor  In 
constitutional  law,  who  congratulated  me  on  what 
they  termed  a  sane  attempt  to  uphold  the  law  In 
time  of  panic. 

Although  one  or  two  ardent  young  people  rushed 
into  print  to  defend  me  from  the  charge  of  "abet- 
ting anarchy,"  It  seemed  to  me  at  the  time  that  mere 
words  would  not  avail.  I  had  felt  that  the  pro- 
tection of  the  law  itself  extended  to  the  most  un- 
popular citizen  was  the  only  reply  to  the  anarchistic 
argument,  to  the  effect  that  this  moment  of  panic 
revealed  the  truth  of  their  theory  of  government; 
that  the  custodians  of  law  and  order  have  become 
the  government  itself  quite  as  the  armed  men  hired 
by  the  medieval  guilds  to  protect  them  in  the  peace- 
ful pursuit  of  their  avocations,  through  sheer 
possession  of  arms  finally  made  themselves  rulers 
of  the  city.  At  that  moment  I  was  firmly  convinced 
that  the  public  could  only  be  convicted  of  the  blind- 
ness of  Its  course,  when  a  body  of  people  with  a 
hundred-fold  of  the  moral  energy  possessed  by  a 
Settlement  group,  should  make  clear  that  there  is 
no  method  by  which  any  community  can  be 
guarded  against  sporadic  efforts  on  the  part  of  half- 


4o8    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

crazed,  discouraged  men,  save  by  a  sense  of  mutual 
rights  and  securities  which  will  include  the  veriest 
outcast. 

It  seemed  to  me  then  that  In  the  millions  of 
words  uttered  and  written  at  that  time,  no  one 
adequately  urged  that  public-spirited  citizens  set 
themselves  the  task  of  patiently  discovering  how 
these  sporadic  acts  of  violence  against  govern- 
ment may  be  understood  and  averted.  We  do 
not  know  whether  they  occur  among  the  dis- 
couraged and  unasslmilated  immigrants  who  might 
be  cared  for  in  such  a  way  as  enormously  to  lessen 
the  probability  of  these  acts,  or  whether  they  are 
the  result  of  anarchistic  teaching.  By  hastily 
concluding  that  the  latter  is  the  sole  explanation 
for  them,  we  make  no  attempt  to  heal  and  cure 
the  situation.  Failure  to  make  a  proper  diagnosis 
may  mean  treatment  of  a  disease  which  does  not 
exist,  or  it  may  furthermore  mean  that  the  dire 
malady  from  which  the  patient  is  suffering  be 
permitted  to  develop  unchecked.  And  yet  as  the 
details  of  the  meager  life  of  the  President's  as- 
sassin were  disclosed,  they  were  a  challenge  to  the 
forces  for  social  betterment  in  American  cities. 
Was  it  not  an  indictment  to  all  those  whose  busi- 
ness it  is  to  interpret  and  solace  the  wretched, 
that  a  boy  should  have  grown  up  in  an  American 
city  so  uncared  for,  so  untouched  by  higher  issues, 
his  wounds  of  life  so  unhealed  by  religion  that  the 
first  talk  he  ever  heard  dealing  with  life's  wrongs. 


ECHOES   OF   RUSSIAN   REVOLUTION     409 

although  anarchistic  and  violent,  should  yet  ap- 
pear to  point  a  way  of  relief  ? 

The  conviction  that  a  sense  of  fellowship  is 
the  only  implement  which  will  break  into  the 
locked  purpose  of  a  half-crazed  creature  bent 
upon  destruction  in  the  name  of  justice,  came  to 
me  through  an  experience  recited  to  me  at  this 
time  by  an  old  anarchist. 

He  was  a  German  cobbler  who,  through  all  the 
changes  in  the  manufacturing  of  shoes,  had 
steadily  clung  to  his  little  shop  on  a  Chicago 
thoroughfare,  partly  as  an  expression  of  his  in- 
dividualism and  partly  because  he  preferred  bitter 
poverty  in  a  place  of  his  own  to  good  wages  under 
a  disciplinary  foreman.  The  assassin  of  President 
McKinley  on  his  way  through  Chicago  only  a 
few  days  before  he  committed  his  dastardly  deed, 
had  visited  all  the  anarchists  whom  he  could  find 
in  the  city,  asking  them  for  "the  password"  as 
he  called  it.  They,  of  course,  possessed  no  such 
thing,  and  had  turned  him  away,  some  with  dis- 
gust and  all  with  a  certain  degree  of  impatience, 
as  a  type  of  the  ill-balanced  man  who,  as  they 
put  it,  was  always  "hanging  around  the  move- 
ment, without  the  slightest  conception  of  its 
meaning."  Among  other  people,  he  visited  the 
German  cobbler,  who  treated  him  much  as  the 
others  had  done,  but  who,  after  the  event  had 
made  clear  the  identity  of  his  visitor,  was  filled 
with  the  most  bitter  remorse  that  he  had  failed 


4IO    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

to  utilize  his  chance  meeting  with  the  assassin  to 
deter  him  from  his  purpose.  He  knew  as  well  as 
any  psychologist  who  has  read  the  history  of  such 
solitary  men  that  the  only  possible  way  to  break 
down  such  a  persistent  and  secretive  purpose,  was 
by  the  kindliness  which  might  have  induced  con- 
fession, which  might  have  restored  the  future 
assassin  into  fellowship  with  normal  men. 

In  the  midst  of  his  remorse,  the  cobbler  told 
me  a  tale  of  his  own  youth ;  that  years  before, 
when  an  ardent  young  fellow  in  Germany,  newly 
converted  to  the  philosophy  of  anarchism,  as  he 
called  it,  he  had  made  up  his  mind  that  the  Church, 
as  much  as  the  State,  was  responsible  for  human 
oppression,  and  that  this  fact  could  best  be  set 
forth  "in  the  deed"  by  the  public  destruction  of 
a  clergyman  or  priest;  that  he  had  carried  fire- 
arms for  a  year  with  this  purpose  in  mind,  but 
that  one  pleasant  summer  evening,  in  a  moment 
of  weakness,  he  had  confided  his  intention  to  a 
friend,  and  that  from  that  moment  he  not  only 
lost  all  desire  to  carry  it  out,  but  it  seemed  to 
him  the  most  preposterous  thing  imaginable.  In 
concluding  the  story  he  said:  "That  poor  fellow 
sat  just  beside  me  on  my  bench;  if  I  had  only 
put  my  hand  on  his  shoulder  and  said,  'Now,  look 
here,  brother,  what  is  on  your  mind  ^  What 
makes  you  talk  such  nonsense  ?  Tell  me.  I 
have  seen  much  of  life,  and  understand  all  kinds 
of  men.     I  have  been  young  and  hot-headed  and 


ECHOES   OF   RUSSIAN  REVOLUTION     411 

foolish  myself;'  if  he  had  told  me  of  his  purpose 
then  and  there,  he  would  never  have  carried  it 
out.  The  whole  nation  would  have  been  spared 
this  horror."  As  he  concluded  he  shook  his  gray 
head  and  sighed  as  if  the  whole  incident  were 
more  than  he  could  bear  —  one  of  those  terrible 
sins  of  omission;  one  of  the  things  he  ''ought  to 
have  done,"  the  memory  of  which  is  so  hard  to 
endure. 

The  attempt  a  Settlement  makes  to  interpret 
American  institutions  to  those  who  are  bewildered 
concerning  them  either  because  of  their  personal 
experiences,  or  because  of  preconceived  theories, 
would  seem  to  lie  in  the  direct  path  of  its  public 
obligation,  and  yet  it  is  apparently  impossible  for 
the  overwrought  community  to  distinguish  between 
the  excitement  the  Settlements  are  endeavoring  to 
understand  and  to  allay  and  the  attitude  of  the 
Settlement  itself.  At  times  of  public  panic,  fervid 
denunciation  is  held  to  be  the  duty  of  every  good 
citizen,  and  if  a  Settlement  is  convinced  that  the 
incident  should  be  used  to  vindicate  the  law  and 
does  not  at  the  moment  give  its  strength  to  de- 
nunciation, its  attitude  is  at  once  taken  to  imply 
a  championship  of  anarchy  itself. 

The  public  mind  at  such  a  moment  falls  into 
the  old  medieval  confusion  —  he  who  feeds  or 
shelters  a  heretic  is  upon  prima  facie  evidence  a 
heretic  himself  —  he  who  knows  intimately  people 
among    whom    anarchists    arise,    is    therefore    an 


412    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

anarchist.  I  personally  am  convinced  that  an- 
archy as  a  philosophy  is  dying  down,  not  only  in 
Chicago,  but  everywhere  ;  that  their  leading  organs 
have  discontinued  publication,  and  that  their 
most  eminent  men  in  America  have  deserted 
them.  Even  those  groups  which  have  continued 
to  meet  are  dividing,  and  the  major  half  in  almost 
every  instance  calls  itself  socialist-anarchists,  an 
apparent  contradiction  of  terms,  whose  members 
insist  that  the  socialistic  organization  of  society 
must  be  the  next  stage  of  social  development  and 
must  be  gone  through  with,  so  to  speak,  before 
the  ideal  state  of  society  can  be  reached,  so  nearly 
begging  the  question  that  some  orthodox  social- 
ists are  willing  to  recognize  them.  It  is  certainly 
true  that  just  because  anarchy  questions  the  very 
foundations  of  society,  the  most  elemental  sense  of 
protection  demands  that  the  method  of  meeting 
the  challenge  should  be  intelligently  considered. 

Whether  or  not  Hull-House  has  accomplished 
anything  by  its  method  of  meeting  such  a  situa- 
tion, or  at  least  attempting  to  treat  it  In  a  way 
which  will  not  destroy  confidence  in  the  American 
institutions  so  adored  by  refugees  from  foreign 
governmental  oppression,  it  is  of  course  Impossible 
for  me  to  say. 

And  yet  it  was  in  connection  with  an  effort  to 
pursue  an  Intelligent  policy  In  regard  to  a  so- 
called  ''foreign  anarchist"  that  Hull-House  again 
became  associated  with  that  creed  six  years  later. 


ECHOES   OF   RUSSIAN   REVOLUTION    413 

This  again  was  an  echo  of  the  Russian  revolution, 
but  in  connection  with  one  of  its  humblest  repre- 
sentatives. A  young  Russian  Jew  named  Aver- 
buch  appeared  in  the  early  morning  at  the  house 
of  the  Chicago  chief  of  police  upon  an  obscure 
errand.  It  was  a  moment  of  panic  everywhere  in 
regard  to  anarchists  because  of  a  recent  murder 
in  Denver  which  had  been  charged  to  an  Italian 
anarchist,  and  the  chief  of  police,  assuming  that 
the  dark  young  man  standing  in  his  hallway  was 
an  anarchist  bent  upon  his  assassination,  hastily 
called  for  help.  In  a  panic  born  of  fear  and  self- 
defense,  young  Averbuch  was  shot  to  death.  The 
members  of  the  Russian-Jewish  colony  on  the  west 
side  of  Chicago  were  thrown  into  a  state  of  intense 
excitement  as  soon  as  the  nationality  of  the 
young  man  became  known.  They  were  filled  with 
dark  forebodings  from  a  swift  prescience  of  what 
it  would  mean  to  them  were  the  odium  of  an- 
archy rightly  or  wrongly  attached  to  one  of  their 
members.  It  seemed  to  the  residents  of  Hull- 
House  most  important  that  every  effort  should 
be  made  to  ascertain  just  what  did  happen, 
that  every  means  of  securing  Information  should 
be  exhausted  before  a  final  opinion  should  be 
formed,  and  this  odium  fastened  upon  a  colony 
of  law-abiding  citizens.  The  police  might  be 
right  or  wrong  In  their  assertion  that  the  man 
was  an  anarchist.  It  was,  tc  our  minds,  also  most 
unfortunate  that  the  Chicago  police  in  the  deter- 


414    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

minatlon  to  uncover  an  anarchistic  plot  should 
have  utilized  the  most  drastic  methods  of  search 
within  the  Russian-Jewish  colony  composed  of 
families  only  too  familiar  with  the  methods  of 
the  Russian  police.  Therefore,  when  the  Chicago 
police  ransacked  all  the  printing  offices  they  could 
locate  in  the  colony,  when  they  raided  a  restaurant 
which  they  regarded  as  suspicious  because  it  had 
been  supplying  food  at  cost  to  the  unemployed, 
when  they  searched  through  private  houses  for 
papers  and  photographs  of  revolutionaries,  when 
they  seized  the  library  of  the  Edelstadt  group  and 
carried  the  books,  including  Shakespeare  and  Her- 
bert Spencer,  to  the  city  hall,  when  they  arrested 
two  friends  of  young  Averbuch  and  kept  them  in 
the  police  station  forty-eight  hours,  when  they 
mercilessly  "sweated"  the  sister,  Olga,  that  she 
might  be  startled  into  a  confession  —  all  these 
things  so  poignantly  reminded  them  of  Russian 
methods,  that  indignation  fed  both  by  old  memory 
and  bitter  disappointment  in  America,  swept  over 
the  entire  colony.  The  older  men  asked  whether 
constitutional  rights  gave  no  guarantee  against 
such  violent  aggression  of  police  power,  and  the 
hot-headed  younger  ones  cried  out  at  once  that 
the  only  way  to  deal  with  the  police  was  to  defy 
them,  which  was  true  of  police  the  world  over. 
It  was  said  many  times  that  those  who  are  with- 
out influence  and  protection  in  a  strange  country 
fare  exactly  as  hard  as  do  the  poor  In  Europe; 


ECHOES   OF   RUSSIAN   REVOLUTION    415 

that  all  the  talk  of  guaranteed  protection  through 
political  institutions  is  nonsense. 

Every  Settlement  has  classes  in  citizenship  in 
which  the  principles  of  American  institutions  are 
expounded  and  of  these  the  community,  as  a  whole, 
approves.  But  the  Settlements  know  better  than 
any  one  else  that  while  these  classes  and  lectures 
are  useful,  nothing  can  possibly  give  lessons  in 
citizenship  so  effectively  and  make  so  clear  the 
constitutional  basis  of  a  self-governing  community 
as  the  current  event  itself.  The  treatment  at  a 
given  moment  of  that  foreign  colony  which  feels 
itself  outraged  and  misunderstood,  either  makes 
its  constitutional  rights  clear  to  it,  or  forever  con- 
fuses it  on  the  subject. 

The  only  method  by  which  a  reasonable  and  loyal 
conception  of  government  may  be  substituted  for 
the  one  formed  upon  Russian  experiences,  is  that 
the  actual  experience  of  refugees  with  government 
in  America  shall  gradually  demonstrate  what  a 
very  different  thing  government  means  here.  Such 
an  event  as  the  Averbuch  affair  affords  an  unprece- 
dented opportunity  to  make  clear  this  difference 
and  to  demonstrate  beyond  the  possibility  of  mis- 
understanding that  the  guarantee  of  constitutional 
rights  implies  that  officialism  shall  be  restrained 
and  guarded  at  every  point,  that  the  official  repre- 
sents, not  the  will  of  a  small  administrative  body, 
but  the  will  of  the  entire  people,  and  that  methods 
therefore  have  been  constituted  by  which  official 


4i6    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 


aggression  may  be  restrained.  The  Averbuch  Inci- 
dent gave  an  opportunity  to  demonstrate  this  to 
that  very  body  of  people  who  need  it  most ;  to 
those  who  have  lived  In  Russia  where  autocratic 
officers  represent  autocratic  power  and  where  gov- 
ernment Is  officialism. 
It  seemed  to  the  resi- 
dents in  the  Settle- 
ments nearest  the 
Russian-Jewish  col- 
ony that  It  was  an 
obvious  piece  of  pub- 
lic spirit  to  try  out 
all  the  legal  value 
involved,  to  insist 
that  American  in- 
stitutions were  stout 
enough  not  to  break 
down  In  times  of 
stress  and  public 
panic. 

The  belief  of  many 
Russians  that  the 
Averbuch  Incident  would  be  made  a  prelude  to  the 
constant  use  of  the  extradition  treaty  for  the  sake 
of  terrorizing  revolutionists  both  at  home  and 
abroad,  received  a  certain  corroboration  when  an 
attempt  was  made  In  1908  to  extradite  a  Russian 
revolutionist  named  Rudovltz  who  was  living  In 
Chicago.     The  first  hearing  before  a  United  States 


ECHOES  OF  RUSSIAN  REVOLUTION    417 

Commissioner  gave  a  verdict  favorable  to  the 
Russian  Government  although  this  was  afterwards 
reversed  by  the  Department  of  State  in  Wash- 
ington. Partly  to  educate  American  sentiment, 
partly  to  express  sympathy  with  the  Russian 
refugees  in  their  dire  need,  a  series  of  public 
meetings  was  arranged  in  which  the  operations 
of  the  extradition  treaty  were  discussed  by  many 
of  us  who  had  spoken  at  a  meeting  held  in  pro- 
test against  its  ratification  fifteen  years  before. 
It  is  impossible  for  any  one  unacquainted  with 
the  Russian  colony  to  realize  the  consternation 
produced  by  this  attempted  extradition.  I  acted 
as  treasurer  of  the  fund  collected  to  defray  the 
expenses  of  halls  and  printing  in  the  campaign 
against  the  policy  of  extradition  and  had  many 
opportunities  to  talk  with  members  of  the  colony. 
One  old  man,  tearing  his  hair  and  beard  as  he  spoke, 
declared  that  all  his  sons  and  grandsons  might  thus 
be  sent  back  to  Russia ;  in  fact,  all  of  the  younger 
men  in  the  colony  might  be  extradited,  for  every 
high-spirited  young  Russian  was,  in  a  sense,  a 
revolutionist. 

Would  it  not  provoke  to  ironic  laughter  that 
very  nemesis  which  presides  over  the  destinies  of 
nations,  if  the  most  autocratic  government  yet 
remaining  in  civilization  should  succeed  in  utilizing 
for  its  own  autocratic  methods  the  youngest  and 
most  daring  experiment  in  democratic  government 
which  the  world  has  ever  seen  ?     Stranger  results 


41 8    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

have  followed  a  course  of  stupidity  and  injustice 
resulting  from  blindness  and  panic  ! 

It  is  certainly  true  that  if  the  decision  of  the 
federal  office  in  Chicago  had  not  been  reversed  by 
the  department  of  state  in  Washington,  the  United 
States  government  would  have  been  committed 
to  return  thousands  of  spirited  young  refugees  to 
the  punishments  of  the  Russian  autocracy. 

It  was  perhaps  significant  of  our  need  of  what 
Napoleon  called  a  "revival  of  civic  morals"  that 
the  public  appeal  against  such  a  reversal  of  our 
traditions  had  to  be  based  largely  upon  the  con- 
tributions to  American  progress  made  from  other 
revolutions ;  the  Puritans  from  the  English,  La- 
fayette from  the  French,  Carl  Schurz  and  many 
another  able  man  from  the  German  upheavals  in 
the  middle  of  the  century. 

A  distinguished  German  scholar  writing  at  the 
end  of  his  long  life  a  description  of  his  friends  of 
1848  who  made  a  gallant  although  premature  effort 
to  unite  the  German  states  and  to  secure  a  consti- 
tutional government,  thus  concludes  :  "But  not  a 
few  saw  the  whole  of  their  lives  wrecked,  either  in 
prison  or  poverty,  though  they  had  done  no  wrong, 
and  in  many  cases  were  the  finest  characters  it  has 
been  my  good  fortune  to  know.  They  were  before 
their  time ;  the  fruit  was  not  ripe,  as  it  was  in  1871, 
and  Germany  but  lost  her  best  sons  in  those  miser- 
able years."  When  the  time  is  ripe  in  Russia, 
when  she  finally  yields  to  those  great  forces  which 


ECHOES   OF  RUSSIAN  REVOLUTION    419 

are  molding  and  renovating  contemporary  life, 
when  her  Cavour  and  her  Bismarck  finally  throw 
into  the  first  governmental  forms  all  that  yearning 
for  juster  human  relations  which  the  idealistic 
Russian  revolutionists  embody,  we  may  look  back 
upon  these  ^'miserable  years"  with  a  sense  of 
chagrin  at  our  lack  of  sympathy  and  understanding. 
Again  it  is  far  from  easy  to  comprehend  the  great 
Russian  struggle.  I  recall  a  visit  from  the  famous 
revolutionist  Gershuni,  who  had  escaped  from 
Siberia  in  a  barrel  of  cabbage  rolled  under  the  very 
fortress  of  the  commandant  himself,  had  made  his 
way  through  Manchuria  and  China  to  San  Fran- 
cisco, and  on  his  way  back  to  Russia  had  stopped 
in  Chicago  for  a  few  days.  Three  months  later  we 
heard  of  his  death,  and  whenever  I  recall  the  con- 
versation held  with  him,  I  find  it  invested  with  that 
dignity  which  last  words  imply.  Upon  the  request 
of  a  comrade,  Gershuni  had  repeated  the  substance 
of  the  famous  speech  he  had  made  to  the  court 
which  sentenced  him  to  Siberia.  As  representing 
the  government  against  which  he  had  rebelled,  he 
told  the  court  that  he  might  in  time  be  able  to  for- 
give all  of  their  outrages  and  injustices  save  one  ;  the 
unforgivable  outrage  would  remain  that  hundreds 
of  men  like  himself,  who  were  vegetarians  because 
they  were  not  willing  to  participate  in  the  destruc- 
tion of  living  creatures,  who  had  never  struck  a 
child  even  in  punishment,  who  were  so  consumed 
with  tenderness  for  the  outcast  and  oppressed  that 


420    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

they  had  lived  for  weeks  among  starving  peasants 
only  that  they  might  cheer  and  solace  them,  —  that 
these  men  should  have  been  driven  into  terrorism, 
until  impelled  to  "execute,"  as  they  call  it, — '*  assas- 
sinate" the  Anglo-Saxon  would  term  it, —  public  offi- 
cials, was  something  for  which  he  would  never  for- 
give the  Russian  government.  It  was,  perhaps,  the 
heat  of  the  argument,  as  much  as  conviction,  which 
led  me  to  reply  that  it  would  be  equally  difficult 
for  society  to  forgive  these  very  revolutionists  for 
one  thing  they  had  done,  their  institution  of  the  use 
of  force  in  such  wise  that  it  would  inevitably  be 
imitated  by  men  of  less  scruple  and  restraint ;  that 
to  have  revived  such  a  method  in  civilization,  to 
have  justified  it  by  their  disinterestedness  of  pur- 
pose and  nobility  of  character,  was  perhaps  the 
gravest  responsibility  that  any  group  of  men  could 
assume.  With  a  smile  of  indulgent  pity  such  as 
one  might  grant  to  a  mistaken  child,  he  replied 
that  such  Tolstoyan  principles  were  as  fitted  to 
Russia  as  "these  toilettes,"  pointing  to  the  thin 
summer  gowns  of  his  listeners,  "were  fitted  to  a 
Siberian  winter."  And  yet  I  held  the  belief  then, 
as  I  certainly  do  now,  that  when  the  sense  of  justice 
seeks  to  express  itself  quite  outside  the  regular  chan- 
nels of  established  government,  it  has  set  forth  on 
a  dangerous  journey  inevitably  ending  in  disaster, 
and  that  this  is  true  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  ad- 
venture may  have  been  inspired  by  noble  motives. 
Still  more  perplexing  than  the  use  of  force  by 


ECHOES   OF  RUSSIAN   REVOLUTION    421 

the  revolutionists  Is  the  employment  of  the  agent- 
provacateur  on  the  part  of  the  Russian  government. 
The  visit  of  Vladimir  Bourtzeff  to  Chicago  just 
after  his  exposure  of  the  famous  secret  agent,  Azeff, 
filled  one  with  perplexity  In  regard  to  a  government 
which  would  connive  at  the  violent  death  of  a 
faithful  official  and  that  of  a  member  of  the  royal 
household  for  the  sake  of  bringing  opprobrium  and 
punishment  to  the  revolutionists  and  credit  to  the 
secret  police. 

The  Settlement  has  also  suffered  through  its  ef- 
fort to  secure  open  discussion  of  the  methods  of 
the  Russian  government.  During  the  excitement 
connected  with  the  visit  of  Gorki  to  this  coun- 
try, three  different  committees  of  Russians  came 
to  Hull-House  begging  that  I  would  secure  a 
statement 'in  at  least  one  of  the  Chicago  dailies  of 
their  own  view,  that  the  agents  of  the  Czar  had 
cleverly  centered  public  attention  upon  Gorki's 
private  life  and  had  fomented  a  scandal  so  success- 
fully that  the  object  of  Gorki's  visit  to  America 
had  been  foiled ;  he  who  had  known  intimately 
the  most  wretched  of  the  Czar's  subjects,  who 
was  best  able  to  sympathetically  portray  their 
wretchedness,  not  only  failed  to  get  a  hearing 
before  an  American  audience,  but  could  scarcely 
find  the  shelter  of  a  roof.  I  told  two  of  the  Rus- 
sian committees  that  it  was  hopeless  to  undertake 
any  explanation  of  the  bitter  attack  until  public  ex- 
citement had  somewhat  subsided ;  but  one  Sunday 


422    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

afternoon  when  a  third  committee  arrived,  I  said 
that  I  would  endeavor  to  have  reprinted  In  a 
Chicago  dally  the  few  scattered  articles  written 
for  the  magazines  which  tried  to  explain  the  situa- 
tion, one  by  the  head  professor  In  political  economy 
of  a  leading  university,  and  others  by  publicists 
well  Informed  as  to  Russian  affairs. 

I  hoped  that  a  cosmopolitan  newspaper  might 
feel  an  obligation  to  recognize  the  desire  for  fair 
play  on  the  part  of  thousands  of  its  readers  among 
the  Russians,  Poles,  and  Finns,  at  least  to  the 
extent  of  reproducing  these  magazine  articles 
under  a  noncommittal  caption.  That  same  Sun- 
day evening  In  company  with  one  of  the  residents, 
I  visited  a  newspaper  office  only  to  hear  Its  repre- 
sentative say  that  my  plan  was  quite  out  of  the 
question,  as  the  whole  subject  was  what  news- 
paper men  called  ''a  sacred  cow."  He  said,  how- 
ever, that  he  would  willingly  print  an  article 
which  I  myself  should  write  and  sign.  I  declined 
this  offer  with  the  statement  that  one  who  had 
my  opportunities  to  see  the  struggles  of  poor 
women  In  securing  support  for  their  children, 
found  it  Impossible  to  write  anything  which  would 
however  remotely  justify  the  loosening  of  mar- 
riage bonds,  even  if  the  defense  of  Gorki  made 
by  the  Russian  committees  was  sound.  We  left 
the  newspaper  office  somewhat  discouraged  with 
what  we  thought  one  more  unsuccessful  effort  to 
procure  a  hearing  for  the  immigrants. 


ECHOES  OF  RUSSIAN  REVOLUTION    423 

I  had  considered  the  incident  closed,  when  to 
my  horror  and  surprise  several  months  afterwards 
it  was  made  the  basis  of  a  story  with  every^  pos- 
sible vicious  interpretation.  One  of  the  Chicago 
newspapers  had  been  indicted  by  Mayor  Dunne 
for  what  he  considered  an  actionable  attack  upon 
his  appointees  to  the  Chicago  School  Board  of 
whom  I  was  one,  and  the  incident  enlarged  and 
coarsened  was  submitted  as  evidence  to  the 
Grand  Jury  in  regard  to  my  views  and  influence. 
Although  the  evidence  was  thrown  out,  an  attempt 
was  again  made  to  revive  this  story  by  the  mana- 
gers of  Mayor  Dunne's  second  campaign,  this 
time  to  show  how  "the  protector  of  the  oppressed" 
was  traduced.  The  incident  is  related  here  as  an 
example  of  the  clever  use  of  that  old  device  which 
throws  upon  the  radical  in  religion,  in  education,  and 
in  social  reform,  the  odium  of  encouraging  "harlots 
and  sinners"  and  of  defending  their  doctrines.  ^ 

If  the  under  dog  were  always  right,  one  might 
quite  easily  try  to  defend  him.  The  trouble  is 
that  very  often  he  is  but  obscurely  right,  some- 
times only  partially  right,  and  often  quite  wrong ; 
but  perhaps  he  is  never  so  altogether  wrong  and 
pig-headed  and  utterly  reprehensible  as  he^  is 
represented  to  be  by  those  who  add  the  possession 
of  prejudices  to  the  other  almost  insuperable  diffi- 
culties of  understanding  him.  It  was,  perhaps,  not 
surprising  that  with  these  excellent  opportunities 
for  misjudging  Hull-House,  we  should  have  suffered 


424    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

attack  from  time  to  time  whenever  any  untoward 
event  gave  an  opening  as  when  an  ItaKan  immi- 
grant murdered  a  priest  in  Denver,  Colorado. 
Although  the  wretched  man  had  never  been  in 
Chicago,  much  less  at  Hull-House,  a  Chicago  eccle- 
siastic asserted  that  he  had  learned  hatred  of  the 
Church  as  a  member  of  the  Giordano  Bruno  Club, 
an  Italian  Club,  one  of  whose  members  lived  at 
Hull-House,  and  which  had  occasionally  met  there, 
although  it  had  long  maintained  clubrooms  of  its 
own.  This  club  had  its  origin  in  the  old  struggles 
of  united  Italy  against  the  temporal  power  of  the 
Pope,  one  of  the  European  echoes  with  which 
Chicago  resounds.  The  Italian  resident,  as  the 
editor  of  a  paper  representing  new  Italy,  had 
come  in  sharp  conflict  with  the  Chicago  ecclesi- 
astic, first  in  regard  to  naming  a  public  school  of 
the  vicinity  after  Garibaldi,  which  was  of  course 
not  tolerated  by  the  Church,  and  then  in  regard 
to  many  another  issue  arising  in  anticlerlcalism, 
which,  although  a  political  party,  is  constantly  in- 
volved, from  the  very  nature  of  the  case,  in  theo- 
logical difficulties.  The  contest  had  been  carried 
on  with  a  bitterness  impossible  for  an  American 
to  understand,  but  its  origin  and  implications  were 
so  obvious  that  it  did  not  occur  to  any  of  us  that 
it  could  be  associated  with  Hull-House  either  in 
its  motive  or  direction. 

The  ecclesiastic  himself  had  lived  for  years  In 
Rome,   and   as   I   had  often    discussed    the    prob- 


ECHOES   OF   RUSSIAN   REVOLUTION  425 

lems  of  Italian  politics  with  him,  I  was  quite 
sure  he  understood  the  raison  d'etre  for  the  Gior- 
dano Bruno  Club.  Fortunately  in  the  midst  of 
the  rhetorical  attack,  our  friendly  relations  re- 
mained unbroken  with  the  neighboring  priests 
from  whom  we  continued  to  receive  uniform  cour- 
tesy as  we  cooperated  in  cases  of  sorrow  and  need. 
Hundreds  of  devout  communicants  identified  with 
the  various  Hull-House  clubs  and  classes  were 
deeply  distressed  by  the  incident,  but  assured  us 
it  was  all  a  misunderstanding.  Easter  came  soon 
afterwards,  and  it  was  not  difficult  to  make  a  con- 
nection between  the  attack  and  the  myriad  of 
Easter  cards  which  filled  my  mail. 

Thus  a  Settlement  becomes  involved  In  the 
many  difficulties  of  its  neighbors  as  its  experiences 
make  vivid  the  consciousness  of  modern  inter- 
nationalism. And  yet  the  very  fact  that  the 
sense  of  reality  is  so  keen  and  the  obligation  of 
the  Settlement  so  obvious,  may  perhaps  in  itself 
explain  the  opposition  Hull-House  has  encountered 
when  it  expressed  its  sympathy  with  the  Russian 
revolution.  We  were  much  entertained,  although 
somewhat  ruefully,  when  a  Chicago  woman  with- 
drew from  us  a  large  annual  subscription  because 
Hull-House  had  defended  a  Russian  refugee  while 
she,  who  had  seen  much  of  the  Russian  aristoc- 
racy In  Europe,  knew  from  them  that  all  the  revo- 
lutionary agitation  was  both  unreasonable  and 
unnecessary  ! 


426    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

It  is,  of  course,  impossible  to  say  whether  these 
oppositions  were  inevitable  or  whether  they  were 
indications  that  Hull-House  had  somehow  bungled 
at  its  task.  Many  times  I  have  been  driven  to 
the  confession  of  the  blundering  Amiel :  "It  re- 
quires ability  to  make  what  we  seem  agree  with 
what  we  are." 


A  View  between  Hull-House  Gymnasium  and  Theater. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

Socialized  Education 

In  a  paper  written  years  ago  I  deplored  at  some 
length  the  fact  that  educational  matters  are  more 
democratic  in  their  political  than  in  their  social 
aspect,  and  I  quote  the  following  extract  from  it 
as  throwing  some  light  upon  the  earlier  educa- 
tional undertakings  at  Hull-House:  — 

Teaching  in  a  Settlement  requires  distinct  methods, 
for  it  is  true  of  people  who  have  been  allowed  to  re- 
main undeveloped  and  whose  faculties  are  inert  and 
sterile,  that  they  cannot  take  their  learning  heavily. 
It  has  to  be  diffused  in  a  social  atmosphere,  informa- 
tion must  be  held  in  solution,  in  a  medium  of  fellowship 
and  good  will. 

Intellectual  life  requires  for  its  expansion  and 
manifestation  the  influence  and  assimilation  of  the 
interests  and  affections  of  others.  Mazzini,  that 
greatest  of  all  democrats,  who  broke  his  heart  over 
the  condition  of  the  South  European  peasantry,  said  : 
"Education  is  not  merely  a  necessity  of  true  life  by 
which  the  individual  renews  his  vital  force  in  the  vital 
force  of  humanity ;  it  is  a  Holy  Communion  with 
generations  dead  and  living,  by  which  he  fecundates 
all  his  faculties.  When  he  is  withheld  from  this  Com- 
munion  for   generations,    as    the    Italian   peasant   has 

427 


428    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

been,  we  say,  'He  Is  like  a  beast  of  the  field;  he  must 
be  controlled  by  force.'"  Even  to  this  it  is  some- 
times added  that  it  is  absurd  to  educate  him,  immoral 
to  disturb  his  content.  We  stupidly  use  the  effect  as 
an  argument  for  a  continuance  of  the  cause.  It  is 
needless  to  say  that  a  Settlement  is  a  protest  against  a 
restricted  view  of  education. 

In  line  with  this  declaration,  Hull-House  In  the 
very  beginning  opened  what  we  called  College 
Extension  Classes  with  a  faculty  finally  numbering 
thirty-five  college  men  and  women,  many  of  whom 
held  their  pupils  for  consecutive  years.  As  these 
classes  antedated  In  Chicago  the  University  Exten- 
sion and  Normal  Extension  classes  and  supplied  a 
demand  for  stimulating  Instruction,  the  attend- 
ance strained  to  their  utmost  capacity  the  spacious 
rooms  in  the  old  house.  The  relation  of  students, 
and  faculty  to  each  other  and  to  the  residents 
was  that  of  guest  and  hostess  and  at  the  close  of 
each  term  the  residents  gave  a  reception  to  stu- 
dents and  faculty  which  was  one  of  the  chief 
social  events  of  the  season.  Upon  this  comfort- 
able social  basis  some  very  good  work  was  done. 

In  connection  with  these  classes  a  Hull-House 
summer  school  was  instituted  at  Rockford  Col- 
lege, which  was  most  generously  placed  at  our 
disposal  by  the  trustees.  For  ten  years  one  hun- 
dred women  gathered  there  for  six  weeks.  In  addi- 
tion there  were  always  men  on  the  faculty,  and  a 
small   group   of  young   men   among   the   students 


SOCIALIZED   EDUCATION  429 

who  were  lodged  in  the  gymnasium  building.  The 
outdoor  classes  in  bird  study  and  botany,  the 
serious  reading  of  literary  masterpieces,  the  boat 
excursions  on  the  Rock  River,  the  cooperative 
spirit  of  doing  the  housework  together,  the  satirical 
commencements  in  parti-colored  caps  and  gowns, 
lent  themselves  toward  a  reproduction  of  the 
comradeship  which  college  life  fosters. 

As  each  member  of  the  faculty,  as  well  as  the 
students,  paid  three  dollars  a  week,  and  as  we 
had  little  outlay  beyond  the  actual  cost  of  food, 
we  easily  defrayed  our  expenses.  The  under- 
taking was  so  simple  and  gratifying  in  results  that 
it  might  well  be  reproduced  in  many  college  build- 
ings which  are  set  in  the  midst  of  beautiful  sur- 
roundings, unused  during  the  two  months  of  the 
year,  when  hundreds  of  people,  able  to  pay  only  a 
moderate  price  for  lodgings  in  the  country,  can 
find  nothing  comfortable  and  no  mental  food 
more  satisfying  than  piazza  gossip. 

Every  Thursday  evening  during  the  first  years, 
a  public  lecture  came  to  be  an  expected  event  in 
the  neighborhood,  and  Hull-House  became  one  of 
the  early  University  Extension  centers,  first  in 
connection  with  an  independent  society  and  later 
with  the  University  of  Chicago.  One  of  the  Hull- 
House  trustees  was  so  impressed  with  the  value  of 
this  orderly  and  continuous  presentation  of  eco- 
nomic subjects  that  he  endowed  three  courses  in  a 
downtown  center,  in  which  the  lectures  were  free 


430    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

to  any  one  who  chose  to  come.  He  was  much 
pleased  that  these  lectures  were  largely  attended 
by  worklngmen  who  ordinarily  prefer  that  an  eco- 
nomic subject  shall  be  presented  by  a  partisan, 
and  who  are  supremely  indifferent  to  examinations 
and  credits.  They  also  dislike  the  balancing  of 
pro  and  con  which  scholarly  instruction  implies, 
and  prefer  to  be  "inebriated  on  raw  truth"  rather 
than  to  sip  a  carefully  prepared  draught  of  knowl- 
edge. 

Nevertheless  Bowen  Hall,  which  seats  seven 
hundred  and  fifty  people,  is  often  none  too  large 
to  hold  the  audiences  of  men  who  come  to  Hull- 
House  every  Sunday  evening  during  the  winter  to 
attend  the  illustrated  lectures  provided  by  the 
faculty  of  the  University  of  Chicago,  and  others 
who  kindly  give  their  services.  These  courses 
differ  enormously  in  their  popularity :  one  on 
European  capitals  and  their  social  significance  was 
followed  with  the  most  vivid  attention  and  sense 
of  participation  indicated  by  groans  and  hisses 
when  the  audience  was  reminded  of  an  unforget- 
able  feud  between  Austria  and  her  Slavic  subjects, 
or  when  they  wildly  applauded  a  Polish  hero 
endeared  through  his  tragic  failure. 

In  spite  of  the  success  of  these  Sunday  evening 
courses,  it  has  never  been  an  easy  undertaking  to 
find  acceptable  lecturers.  A  course  of  lectures  on 
astronomy  Illustrated  by  stereoptlcon  slides  will 
attract  a  large  audience  the  first  week,  who  hope 


SOCIALIZED   EDUCATION  431 

to  hear  of  the  wonders  of  the  heavens  and  the 
relation  of  our  earth  thereto,  but  Instead  are 
treated  to  spectrum  analyses  of  star  dust,  or  the 
latest  theory  concerning  the  milky  way.  The 
habit  of  research  and  the  desire  to  say  the  latest 
word  upon  any  subject  often  overcomes  the  sym- 
pathetic understanding  of  his  audience  which  the 
lecturer  might  otherwise  develop,  and  he  Insensibly 
drops  Into  the  dull  terminology  of  the  classroom. 
There  are,  of  course,  notable  exceptions  ;  we  had 
twelve  gloriously  popular  talks  on  organic  evolu- 
tion, but  the  lecturer  was  not  yet  a  professor 
—  merely  a  university  Instructor  —  and  his  mind 
was  still  eager  over  the  marvel  of  it  all.  Fortu- 
nately there  are  an  increasing  number  of  lecturers 
whose  matter  is  so  real,  so  definite  and  so  valu- 
able, that  In  an  attempt  to  give  it  an  exact  equiva- 
lence in  words,  they  utilize  the  most  direct  forms 
of  expression. 

It  sometimes  seems  as  If  the  men  of  substantial 
scholarship  were  content  to  leave  to  the  charletan 
the  teaching  of  those  things  which  deeply  concern 
the  welfare  of  mankind,  and  that  the  mass  of  men 
get  their  intellectual  food  from  the  outcasts  of 
scholarship,  who  provide  millions  of  books,  pic- 
tures, and  shows,  not  to  instruct  and  guide,  but 
for  the  sake  of  their  own  financial  profit.  A  Settle- 
ment soon  discovers  that  simple  people  are  Inter- 
ested in  large  and  vital  subjects  and  the  Hull- 
House  residents  themselves  at  one  time,  with  only 


432    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

partial  success,  undertook  to  give  a  series  of  lec- 
tures on  the  history  of  the  world,  beginning  with 
the  nebular  hypothesis  and  reaching  Chicago  Itself 
In  the  twenty-fifth  lecture  !     Absurd  as  the  hasty 
review  appears,  there  Is  no  doubt  that  the  beginner 
in  knowledge  Is  always  eager  for  the  general  state- 
ment, as  those  wise  old  teachers  of  the  people  well 
knew,  when  they  put  the  history  of  creation  on  the 
stage  and  the  monks  themselves  became  the  actors. 
I  recall  that  In  planning  my  first  European  journey 
I  had  soberly  hoped  In  two  years  to  trace  the  entire 
pattern  of  human  excellence  as  we  passed  from  one 
country  to  another,  In  the  shrines  popular  affection 
had  consecrated  to  the  saints.  In  the  frequented 
statues  erected  to  heroes,  and  In  the  "worn  bla- 
sonry  of   funeral  brasses,"  —  an   Illustration  that 
when  we  are  young  we  all  long  for  those  mountain 
tops  upon  which  we  may  soberly  stand  and  dream 
of  our  own  ephemeral  and  uncertain  attempts  at 
righteousness.    I  have  had  many  other  Illustrations 
of  this  ;  a  statement  was  recently  made  to  me  by  a 
member  of  the  Hull-House  Boys'  club,  who  had 
been  unjustly  arrested  as  an  accomplice  to  a  young 
thief  and  held  I,n  the  police  station  for  three  days, 
that  during  his  detention  he  "had  remembered  the 
way  Jean  Valjean  behaved  when  he  was  everlast- 
ingly pursued  by  that  policeman  who  was   only 
trying  to  do  right" ;  "I  kept  seeing  the  pictures  In 
that  Illustrated  lecture  you  gave  about  him,  and  I 
thought  it  would  be  queer  if  I   couldn't  behave 


SOCIALIZED  EDUCATION  433 

well  for  three  days  when  he  had  kept  it  up  for 
years." 

The  power  of  dramatic  action  may  unfortunately 
be  illustrated  in  other  ways.  During  the  weeks 
when  all  the  daily  papers  were  full  of  the  details 
of  a  notorious  murder  trial  in  New  York  and  all 
the  hideous  events  which  preceded  the  crime,  one 
evening  I  saw  in  the  street  cars  a  knot  of  working 
girls  leaning  over  a  newspaper,  admiring  the 
clothes,  the  beauty,  and  "sorrowful  expression" 
of  the  unhappy  heroine.  In  the  midst  of  the  trial 
a  woman  whom  I  had  known  for  years  came  to 
talk  to  me  about  her  daughter,  shamefacedly  con- 
fessing that  the  girl  was  trying  to  dress  and  look 
like  the  notorious  girl  in  New  York,  and  that  she 
had  even  said  to  her  mother  in  a  moment  of 
defiance,  "Some  day  I  shall  be  taken  into  court 
and  then  I  shall  dress  just  as  Evelyn  did  and  face 
my  accusers  as  she  did  in  innocence  and  beauty." 

If  one  makes  calls  on  a  Sunday  afternoon  in  the 
homes  of  the  immigrant  colonies  near  Hull-House, 
one  finds  the  family  absorbed  in  the  Sunday  edition 
of  a  sensational  daily  newspaper,  even  those  who 
cannot  read,  quite  easily  following  the  comic 
adventures  portrayed  in  the  colored  pictures  of  the 
supplement  or  tracing  the  clew  of  a  murderer 
carefully  depicted  by  a  black  line  drawn  through  a 
plan  of  the  houses  and  streets. 

Sometimes  lessons  in  the  great  loyalties  and  group 
affections  come  through  life  itself  and  yet  in  such 


434    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

a  manner  that  one  cannot  but  deplore  it.  During 
the  teamsters'  strike  In  Chicago  several  years  ago 
when  class  bitterness  rose  to  a  dramatic  climax,  I 
remember  going  to  visit  a  neighborhood  boy  who 
had  been  severely  injured  when  he  had  taken  the 
place  of  a  union  driver  upon  a  coal  wagon.  As  I 
approached  the  house  In  which  he  lived,  a  large 
group  of  boys  and  girls,  some  of  them  very  little 
children,  surrounded  me  to  convey  the  exciting  in- 
formation that  ^'Jack  T.  was  a  'scab,'"  and  that  I 
couldn't  go  in  there.  I  explained  to  the  excited 
children  that  his  mother,  who  was  a  friend  of  mine, 
was  In  trouble,  quite  Irrespective  of  the  way  her  boy 
had  been  hurt.  The  crowd  around  me  outside  of 
the  house  of  the  ''scab"  constantly  grew  larger 
and  I,  finally  abandoning  my  attempt  at  explana- 
tion, walked  in  only  to  have  the  mother  say  : 
"Please  don't  come  here.  You  will  only  get  hurt, 
too."  Of  course  I  did  not  get  hurt,  but  the  epi- 
sode left  upon  my  mind  one  of  the  most  painful 
impressions  I  have  ever  received  in  connection  with 
the  children  of  the  neighborhood.  In  addition  to 
all  else  are  the  lessons  of  loyalty  and  comradeship 
to  come  to  them  as  the  mere  reversals  of  class 
antagonism  ?  And  yet  it  was  but  a  trifling  inci- 
dent out  of  the  general  spirit  of  bitterness  and 
strife  which  filled  the  city. 

Therefore  the  residents  of  Hull-House  place 
increasing  emphasis  upon  the  great  inspirations 
and  solaces  of  literature  and  are  unwilling  that  it 


SOCIALIZED   EDUCATION  43  S 

should  ever  languish  as  a  subject  for  class  instruc- 
tion or  for  reading  parties.  The  Shakespeare 
club  has  lived  a  continuous  existence  at  Hull- 
House  for  sixteen  years  during  which  time  its 
members  have  heard  the  leading  interpreters  of 
Shakespeare,  both  among  scholars  and  players.  I 
recall  that  one  of  its  earliest  members  said  that  her 
mind  was  peopled  with  Shakespeare  characters 
during  her  long  hours  of  sewing  in  a  shop,  that  she 
couldn't  remember  what  she  thought  about  before 
she  joined  the  club,  and  concluded  that  she  hadn't 
thought  about  anything  at  all.  To  feed  the  mind 
of  the  worker,  to  lift  it  above  the  monotony  of  his 
task,  and  to  connect  it  with  the  larger  world,  outside 
of  his  immediate  surroundings,  has  always  been 
the  object  of  art,  perhaps  never  more  nobly  fulfilled 
than  by  the  great  English  bard.  Miss  Starr  has 
held  classes  in  Dante  and  Browning  for  many 
years  and  the  great  lines  are  conned  with  never 
failing  enthusiasm.  I  recall  Miss  Lathrop's  Plato 
club  and  an  audience  who  listened  to  a  series  of  lec- 
tures by  Dr.  John  Dewey  on  "Social  Psychology," 
as  genuine  intellectual  groups  consisting  largely  of 
people  from  the  immediate  neighborhood,  who  were 
willing  to  make  "that  effort  from  which  we  all 
shrink,  the  effort  of  thought."  But  while  we 
prize  these  classes  as  we  do  the  help  we  are  able 
to  give  to  the  exceptional  young  man  or  woman 
who  reaches  the  college  and  university  and  leaves 
the  neighborhood  of  his  childhood  behind  him,  the 


436    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

residents  of  Hull-House  feel  increasingly  that  the 
educational  efforts  of  a  Settlement  should  not  be 
directed  primarily  to  reproduce  the  college  type  of 
culture,  but  to  work  out  a  method  and  an  ideal 
adapted  to  the  immediate  situation.  They  feel 
that  they  should  promote  a  culture  which  will  not 
set  its  possessor  aside  in  a  class  with  others  like 
himself,  but  which  will,  on  the  contrary,  connect 
him  with  all  sorts  of  people  by  his  ability  to  under- 
stand them  as  well  as  by  his  power  to  supplement 
their  present  surroundings  with  the  historic  back- 
ground. Among  the  hundreds  of  immigrants  who 
have  for  years  attended  classes  at  Hull-House 
designed  primarily  to  teach  the  English  language, 
dozens  of  them  have  struggled  to  express  in  the 
newly  acquired  tongue  some  of  those  hopes  and 
longings  which  had  so  much  to  do  with  their  emi- 
gration. 

A  series  of  plays  was  thus  written  by  a  young 
Bohemian ;  essays  by  a  Russian  youth,  outpouring 
sorrows  rivaling  Werther  himself  and  yet  contain- 
ing the  precious  stuff  of  youth's  perennial  revolt 
against  accepted  wrong ;  stories  of  Russian  oppres- 
sion and  petty  injustices  throughout  which  the 
desire  for  free  America  became  a  crystallized  hope ; 
an  attempt  to  portray  the  Jewish  day  of  Atone- 
ment, in  such  wise  that  even  individualistic  Ameri- 
cans may  catch  a  glimpse  of  that  deeper  national 
life  which  has  survived  all  transplanting  and  ex- 
presses itself  in  forms  so  ancient  that  they  appear 


SOCIALIZED   EDUCATION  437 

grotesque  to  the  Ignorant  spectator.  I  remember 
a  pathetic  effort  on  the  part  of  a  young  Russian 
Jewess  to  describe  the  vivid  inner  life  of  an  old 
Talmud  scholar,  probably  her  uncle  or  father,  as  of 
one  persistently  occupied  with  the  grave  and  im- 
portant things  of  the  spirit,  although  when  brought 
into  sharp  contact  with  busy  and  overworked  people, 
he  inevitably  appeared  self-absorbed  and  slothful. 
Certainly  no  one  who  had  read  her  paper  could 
again  see  such  an  old  man  in  his  praying  shawl  bent 
over  his  crabbed  book,  without  a  sense  of  under- 
standing. 

On  the  other  hand,  one  of  the  most  pitiful 
periods  in  the  drama  of  the  much-praised  young 
American  who  attempts  to  rise  in  life,  is  the  time 
when  his  educational  requirements  seem  to  have 
locked  him  up  and  made  him  rigid.  He  fancies 
himself  shut  off  from  his  uneducated  family  and 
misunderstood  by  his  friends.  He  is  bowed  down 
by  his  mental  accumulations  and  often  gets  no 
farther  than  to  carry  them  through  life  as  a  great 
burden,  and  not  once  does  he  obtain  a  glimpse  of 
the  delights  of  knowledge. 

The  teacher  in  a  Settlement  is  constantly  put 
upon  his  mettle  to  discover  methods  of  instruction 
which  shall  make  knowledge  quickly  available  to 
his  pupils,  and  I  should  like  here  to  pay  my  tribute 
of  admiration  to  the  dean  of  our  educational  de- 
partment. Miss  Landsberg,  and  to  the  many  men 
and  women  who  every  winter  come  regularly  to 


438    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

Hull-House,  putting  untiring  energy  into  the  end- 
less task  of  teaching  the  newly  arrived  immigrant 
the  first  use  of  a  language  of  which  he  has  such 
desperate  need.  Even  a  meager  knowledge  of 
English  may  mean  an  opportunity  to  work  in  a 
factory  versus  nonemployment,  or  It  may  mean 
a  question  of  life  or  death  when  a  sharp  com- 
mand must  be  understood  in  order  to  avoid  the 
danger  of  a  descending  crane. 

In  response  to  a  demand  for  an  education 
which  should  be  immediately  available,  classes 
have  been  established  and  grown  apace  in  cook- 
ing, dressmaking,  and  millinery.  A  girl  who  at- 
tends them  will  often  say  that  she  '' expects  to 
marry  a  worklngman  next  spring,"  and  because 
she  has  worked  in  a  factory  so  long  she  knows 
"little  about  a  house."  Sometimes  classes  are 
composed  of  young  matrons  of  like  factory  ex- 
periences. I  recall  one  of  them  whose  husband 
had  become  so  desperate  after  two  years  of  her 
unskilled  cooking  that  he  had  threatened  to  desert 
her  and  go  where  he  could  get  ''decent  food,"  as 
she  confided  to  me  in  a  tearful  interview,  when 
she  followed  my  advice  to  take  the  Hull-House 
courses  in  cooking,  and  at  the  end  of  six  months 
reported  a  united  and  happy  home. 

Two  distinct  trends  are  found  in  response  to 
these  classes ;  the  first  Is  for  domestic  training, 
and  the  other  is  for  trade  teaching  which  shall 
enable    the    poor    little    milliner    and    dressmaker 


SOCIALIZED   EDUCATION 


439 


apprentices  to  shorten  the  two  years  of  errand 
running  which  is  supposed  to  teach  them  their 
trade. 

The  beginning  of  trade  instruction  has  been 
already  evolved  in  connection  with  the  Hull- 
House  Boys'  club.  The  ample  Boys'  club  build- 
ing presented  to  Hull-House  three  years  ago  by 
one  of  our  trustees  has  afforded  well-equipped 
shops  for  work  in  wood,  iron,  and  brass ;  for 
smithing  in 
copper  and  tin; 
for  commercial 
photography, 
for  printing, 
for  telegraphy, 
and  electrical 
construction. 
These  shops 
have  been  filled 
with  boys  who 
are  eager  for  that  which  seems  to  give  them  a 
clew  to  the  industrial  life  all  about  them.  These 
classes  meet  twice  a  week  and  are  taught  by  in- 
telligent workingmen  who  apparently  give  the 
boys  what  they  want  better  than  do  the  strictly 
professional  teachers.  While  these  classes  in  no 
sense  provide  a  trade  training,  they  often  enable  a 
boy  to  discover  his  aptitude  and  help  him  in  the 
selection  of  what  he  *' wants  to  be"  by  reducing 
the  trades  to  embryonic  forms.     The  factories  are 


440    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

so  complicated  that  the  boy  brought  in  contact 
with  them,  unless  he  has  some  preliminary  prepa- 
ration, is  apt  to  become  confused.  In  pedagogical 
terms,  he  loses  his  "power  of  orderly  reaction" 
and  is  often  so  discouraged  or  so  overstimulated  in 
his  very  first  years  of  factory  life  that  his  future 
usefulness  is  seriously  impaired. 

One  of  Chicago's  most  significant  experiments  in 
the  direction  of  correlating  the  schools  with  actual 
/  industry  was  for  several  years  carried  on  in  a 
public  school  building  situated  near  Hull-House, 
in  which  the  bricklayers'  apprentices  were  taught 
eight  hours  a  day  in  special  classes  during  the 
non-bricklaying  season.  This  early  public  school 
venture  anticipated  the  very  successful  arrange- 
ment later  carried  on  in  Cincinnati,  in  Pittsburg, 
and  in  Chicago  itself,  whereby  a  group  of  boys 
at  work  in  a  factory  alternate  month  by  month 
with  another  group  who  are  in  school  and  are 
thus  intelligently  conducted  into  the  complicated 
processes  of  modern  industry.  But  for  a  certain 
type  of  boy  who  has  been  demoralized  by  the 
constant  change  and  excitement  of  street  life, 
even  these  apprenticeship  classes  are  too  strenu- 
ous, and  he  has  to  be  lured  into  the  path  of  knowl- 
edge by  all  sorts  of  appeals. 

It  sometimes  happens  that  boys  are  held  in  the 
Hull-House  classes  for  weeks  by  their  desire  for 
the  excitement  of  placing  burglar  alarms  under  the 
door  mats.     But  to  enable  the  possessor  of  even  a 


SOCIALIZED   EDUCATION  441 

little  knowledge  to  thus  play  with  it,  is  to  decoy  his 
feet  at  least  through  the  first  steps  of  the  long, 
hard  road  of  learning,  although  even  in  this,  the 
teacher  must  proceed  warily.  Atypical  street  boy 
who  was  utterly  absorbed  in  a  wood-carving  class, 
abruptly  left  never  to  return  when  he  was  told 
to  use  some  simple  calculations  in  the  laying  out. 
of  the  points.  He  evidently  scented  the  approach 
of  his  old  enemy,  arithmetic,  and  fled  the  field. 
On  the  other  hand,  we  have  come  across  many 
cases  in  which  boys  have  vainly  tried  to  secure 
such  opportunities  for  themselves.  During  the 
trial  of  a  boy  of  ten  recently  arrested  for  truancy, 
it  developed  that  he  had  spent  many  hours  watch- 
ing the  electrical  construction  in  a  downtown 
building,  and  many  others  in  the  public  library 
"reading  about  electricity."  Another  boy  who 
was  taken  from  school  early,  when  his  father  lost 
both  of  his  legs  in  a  factory  accident,  tried  in 
vain  to  find  a  place  for  himself  "with  machinery." 
He  was  declared  too  small  for  any  such  position, 
and  for  four  years  worked  as  an  errand  boy,  during 
which  time  he  steadily  turned  in  his  unopened 
pay  envelope  for  the  use  of  the  household.  At 
the  end  of  the  fourth  year  the  boy  disappeared, 
to  the  great  distress  of  his  invalid  father  and  his 
poor  mother  whose  day  washings  became  the 
sole  support  of  the  family.  He  had  beaten  his 
way  to  Kansas  City,  hoping  "they  wouldn't  be 
so  particular  there  about  a  fellow's  size."    He  came 


442    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

back  at  the  end  of  six  weeks  because  he  felt  sorry 
for  his  mother  who,  aroused  at  last  to  a  realiza- 
tion of  his  unbending  purpose,  applied  for  help  to 
the  Juvenile  Protective  Association.  They  found 
a  position  for  the  boy  in  a  machine  shop  and  an 
opportunity  for  evening  classes. 

Out  of  the  fifteen  hundred  members  of  the 
Hull-House  Boys'  club,  hundreds  seem  to  respond 
only  to  the  opportunities  for  recreation,  and  many 
of  the  older  ones  apparently  care  only  for  the 
bowling  and  the  billiards.  And  yet  tournaments 
and  match  games  under  supervision  and  regulated 
hours  are  a  great  advance  over  the  sensual  and 
exhausting  pleasures  to  be  found  so  easily  outside 
the  club.  These  organized  sports  readily  connect 
themselves  with  the  Hull-House  gymnasium  and 
with  all  those  enthusiasms  which  are  so  mys- 
teriously aroused  by  athletics. 

Our  gymnasium  has  been  filled  with  large  and 
enthusiastic  classes  for  eighteen  years  in  spite  of 
the  popularity  of  dancing  and  other  possible  sub- 
stitutes, while  the  Saturday  evening  athletic  con- 
tests have  become  a  feature  of  the  neighborhood. 
The  Settlement  strives  for  that  type  of  gymnastics 
which  is  at  least  partly  a  matter  of  character,  for 
that  training  which  presupposes  abstinence  and 
the  curbing  of  impulse,  as  well  as  for  those  ath- 
letic contests  in  which  the  mind  of  the  contestant 
must  be  vigilant  to  keep  the  body  closely  to  the 
rules  of  the  game.     As  one  sees  in  rhythmic  motion 


SOCIALIZED   EDUCATION  443 

the  slim  bodies  of  a  class  of  lads,  "that  scrupulous 
and  uncontaminate  purity  of  form  which  recom- 
mended itself  even  to  the  Greeks  as  befitting 
messengers  from  the  gods,  if  such  messengers 
should  come, "  one  offers  up  in  awkward  prosaic 
form  the  very  essence  of  that  old  prayer,  "Grant 
them  with  feet  so  light  to  pass  through  life." 
But  while  the  glory  stored  up  for  Olympian  win- 
ners was  at  most  a  handful  of  parsley,  an  ode, 
fame  for  family  and  city,  on  the  other  hand, 
when  the  men  and  boys  from  the  Hull-House 
gymnasium  bring  back  their  cups  and  medals, 
one's  mind  is  filled  with  something  like  foreboding 
in  the  reflection  that  too  much  success  may  lead 
the  winners  into  that  professionalism  which  is  so 
associated  with  betting  and  so  close  to  pugilism. 
Candor,  however,  compels  me  to  state  that  a  long 
acquaintance  with  the  acrobatic  folk  who  have 
to  do  with  the  circus,  a  large  number  of  whom 
practice  in  our  gymnasium  every  winter,  has  raised 
our  estimate  of  that  profession. 

Young  people  who  work  long  hours  at  sedentary 
occupations,  factories  and  offices,  need  perhaps 
more  than  anything  else  the  freedom  and  ease  to 
be  acquired  from  a  symmetrical  muscular  develop- 
ment and  are  quick  to  respond  to  that  fellowship 
which  athletics  apparently  afford  more  easily  than 
anything  else.  The  Greek  immigrants  form  large 
classes  and  are  eager  to  reproduce  the  remnants 
of  old  methods  of  wrestling,  and  other  bits  of  classic 


444    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

lore  which  they  still  possess,  and  when  one  of  the 
Greeks  won  a  medal  in  a  wrestling  match  which 
represented  the  championship  of  the  entire  city, 
it  was  quite  impossible  that  he  should  present  it  to 
the  Hull-House  trophy  chest  without  a  classic  phrase 
which  he  recited  most  gravely  and  charmingly. 

It  was  in  connection  with  a  large  association  of 
Greek  lads  that  Hull-House  finally  lifted  its  long 
restriction  against  military  drill.  If  athletic  con- 
tests are  the  residuum  of  warfare  first  waged  against 
the  conqueror  without  and  then  against  the 
tyrants  within  the  State,  the  modern  Greek  youth 
is  still  in  the  first  stage  so  far  as  his  inherited 
attitude  against  the  Turk  is  concerned.  Each  lad 
believes  that  at  any  moment  he  may  be  called 
home  to  fight  this  long  time  enemy  of  Greece. 
With  such  a  genuine  motive  at  hand,  it  seemed 
mere  affectation  to  deny  the  use  of  our  boys'  club 
building  and  gymnasium  for  organized  drill,  al- 
though happily  it  forms  but  a  small  part  of  the 
activities  of  the  Greek  Educational  Association. 

Having  thus  confessed  to  military  drill  coun- 
tenanced if  not  encouraged  at  Hull-House,  it  is 
perhaps  only  fair  to  relate  an  early  experience  of 
mine  with  the  ^'Columbian  Guards,"  an  organiza- 
tion of  the  World's  Fair  summer.  Although  the 
Hull-House  squad  was  organized  as  the  others 
were  with  the  motto  of  a  clean  city,  it  was 
very  anxious  for  military  drill.  This  request  not 
only    shocked    my    nonresistant    principles,     but 


SOCIALIZED   EDUCATION  445 

seemed  to  afford  an  opportunity  to  find  a  sub- 
stitute for  the  military  tactics  which  were  used  in 
the  boys'  brigades  everywhere,  even  in  those 
connected  with  churches.  As  the  cleaning  of  the 
filthy  streets  and  alleys  was  the  ostensible  pur- 
pose of  the  Columbian  guards,  I  suggested  to  the 
boys  that  we  work  out  a  drill  with  sewer  spades, 
which  with  their  long  narrow  blades  and  shortened 
handles  were  not  so  unlike  bayoneted  guns  in  size, 
weight,  and  general  appearance,  but  that  much 
of  the  usual  military  drill  could  be  readapted. 
While  I  myself  was  present  at  the  gymnasium  to 
explain  that  it  was  nobler  to  drill  in  imitation  of 
removing  disease-breeding  filth  than  to  drill  in 
simulation  of  warfare ;  while  I  distractedly  re- 
adapted  tales  of  chivalry  to  this  modern  rescuing 
of  the  endangered  and  distressed,  the  new  drill 
went  forward  in  some  sort  of  fashion,  but  so  surely 
as  I  withdrew,  the  drillmaster  would  complain 
that  our  troops  would  first  grow  self-conscious, 
then  demoralized  and  finally  flatly  refuse  to  go  on. 
Throughout  the  years  since  the  failure  of  this 
Quixotic  experiment,  I  occasionally  find  one  of 
these  sewer  spades  in  a  Hull-House  storeroom, 
too  truncated  to  be  used  for  its  original  purpose 
and  too  prosaic  to  serve  the  purpose  for  which  it 
was  bought.  I  can  only  look  at  it  in  the  forlorn 
hope  that  it  may  foreshadow  that  piping  time 
when  the  weapons  of  warfare  shall  be  turned  into 
the  implements  of  civic  salvation. 


446    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

Before  closing  this  chapter  on  Socialized  Educa- 
tion, it  is  only  fair  to  speak  of  the  education  accruing 
to  the  Hull-House  residents  themselves  during 
their  years  of  living  in  what  at  least  purports  to 
be  a  center  for  social  and  educational  activity. 

While  a  certain  number  of  the  residents  are 
primarily  interested  in  charitable  administration 
and  the  amelioration  which  can  be  suggested  only 
by  those  who  know  actual  conditions,  there  are 
other  residents  identified  with  the  House  from  its 
earlier  years  to  whom  the  groups  of  immigrants 
make  the  historic  appeal,  and  who  use,  not  only  their 
linguistic  ability,  but  all  the  resource  they  can  com- 
mand of  travel  and  reading  to  qualify  themselves 
for  intelligent  living  in  the  immigrant  quarter  of 
the  city.  I  remember  one  resident  lately  returned 
from  a  visit  in  Sicily,  who  was  able  to  interpret  to  a 
bewildered  judge  the  ancient  privilege  of  a  jilted 
lover  to  scratch  the  cheek  of  his  faithless  sweetheart 
with  the  edge  of  a  coin.  Although  the  Custom  in 
America  had  degenerated  into  a  knife  slashing 
after  the  manner  of  foreign  customs  here,  and  al- 
though the  Sicilian  deserved  punishment,  the  inci- 
dent was  yet  lifted  out  of  the  slough  of  mere  brutal 
assault,  and  the  interpretation  won  the  gratitude  of 
many  Sicilians. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  residents  in  a  Settlement 
too  often  move  towards  their  ends  "with  hurried 
and  ignoble  gait,"  putting  forth  thorns  in  their 
eagerness  to  bear  grapes.     It  is  always  easy  for 


SOCIALIZED   EDUCATION 


447 


those  in  pursuit  of  ends  which  they  consider  of 
overwhelming  importance  to  become  themselves 
thin  and  impoverished  in  spirit  and  temper,  to 
gradually  develop   a  dark  mistaken  eagerness   al- 


ternating  with  fatigue,  which  supersedes  "the  great 
and  gracious  ways"  so  much  more  congruous 
with  worthy  aims. 

Partly  because  of  this  universal  tendency,  partly 
because  a  Settlement  shares  the  perplexities  of  its 
times  and  is  never  too  dogmatic  concerning  the 


448    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

final  truth,  the  residents  would  be  glad  to  make  the 
daily  life  at  the   Settlement  "  conform   to   every 
shape  and  mode  of  excellence." 
It  may  not  be  true 

"That  the  good  are  always  the  merry 
Save  by  an  evil  chance," 

but  a  Settlement  would  make  clear  that  one  need 
not  be  heartless  and  flippant  in  order  to  be  merry, 
nor  solemn  in  order  to  be  wise.  Therefore  quite 
as  Hull-House  tries  to  redeem  billiard  tables  from 
the  association  of  gambling,  and  dancing  from  the 
temptations  of  the  public  dance  halls,  so  it  would 
associate  with  a  life  of  upright  purpose  those  more 
engaging  qualities  which  in  the  experience  of  the 
neighborhood  are  too  often  connected  with  dubious 
aims. 

Throughout  the  history  of  Hull-House  many 
inquiries  have  been  made  concerning  the  religion 
of  the  residents,  and  the  reply  that  they  are  as  di- 
versified in  belief  and  in  the  ardor  of  the  inner  life 
as  any  like  number  of  people  in  a  college  or  similar 
group,  apparently  does  not  carry  conviction.  I 
recall  that  after  a  house  for  men  residents  had  been 
opened  on  Polk  Street  and  the  residential  force  at 
Hull-House  numbered  twenty,  we  made  an  eflfort 
to  come  together  on  Sunday  evenings  in  a  household 
service,  hoping  thus  to  express  our  moral  unity  in 
spite  of  the  fact  that  we  represented  many  creeds. 
But  although  all  of  us  reverently  knelt  when  the 


SOCIALIZED   EDUCATION  449 

High  Church  resident  read  the  evening  service  and 
bowed  our  heads  when  the  evangelical  resident  led 
In  prayer  after  his  chapter,  and  although  we  sat 
respectfully  through  the  twilight  when  a  resident 
read  her  favorite  passages  from  Plato  and  another 
from  Abt  Vogler,  we  concluded  at  the  end  of  the 
winter  that  this  was  not  religious  fellowship  and 
that  we  did  not  care  for  another  reading  club.  So 
It  was  reluctantly  given  up,  and  we  found  that  It 
was  quite  as  necessary  to  come  together  on  the  basis 
of  the  deed  and  our  common  aim  Inside  the  house- 
hold as  It  was  In  the  neighborhood  Itself.  I  once 
had  a  conversation  on  the  subject  with  the  warden 
of  Oxford  House,  who  kindly  Invited  me  to  the  even- 
ing service  held  for  the  residents  In  a  little  chapel 
on  the  top  floor  of  the  Settlement.  All  the  resi- 
dents were  High  Churchmen  to  whom  the  service 
was  an  important  and  reverent  part  of  the  day. 
Upon  my  reply  to  a  query  of  the  warden  that  the 
residents  of  Hull-House  could  not  come  together 
for  religious  worship  because  there  were  among 
us  Jews,  Roman  Catholics,  English  Churchmen, 
Dissenters,  and  a  few  agnostics,  and  that  we  had 
found  unsatisfactory  the  diluted  form  of  worship 
which  we  could  carry  on  together,  he  replied  that 
it  must  be  most  difficult  to  work  with  a  group  so 
diversified,  for  he  depended  upon  the  evening 
service  to  clear  away  any  difficulties  which  the  day 
had  involved  and  to  bring  the  residents  to  a  religious 
consciousness  of  their  common  aim.     I  replied  that 


450    TWENTY  YEARS   AT  HULL-HOUSE 

this  diversity  of  creed  was  part  of  the  situation 
in  American  Settlements,  as  It  was  our  task  to  live 
in  a  neighborhood  of  many  nationalities  and  faiths, 
and  that  it  might  be  possible  that  among  such 
diversified  people  it  was  better  that  the  Settle- 
ment corp  should  also  represent  varying  religious 
beliefs. 

A  wise  man  has  told  us  that  "men  are  once  for 
all  so  made  that  they  prefer  a  rational  world  to 
believe  In  and  to  live  In,"  but  that  It  is  no  easy 
matter  to  find  a  world  rational  as  to  its  intellectual, 
aesthetic,  moral,  and  practical  aspects.  Certainly 
it  is  no  easy  matter  if  the  place  selected  is  of  the 
very  sort  where  the  four  aspects  are  apparently 
furthest  from  perfection,  but  an  undertaking  resem- 
bling this  is  what  the  Settlement  gradually  becomes 
committed  to,  as  its  function  is  revealed  through  the 
reaction  on  its  consciousness  of  its  own  experiences. 
Because  of  this  fourfold  undertaking,  the  Settle- 
ment has  gathered  into  residence  people  of  widely 
diversified  tastes  and  Interests  and  In  Hull-House, 
at  least,  the  group  has  been  surprisingly  permanent. 
The  majority  of  the  present  corp  of  forty  residents 
support  themselves  by  their  business  and  profes- 
sional occupations  in  the  city  giving  only  their 
leisure  time  to  Settlement  undertakings.  This  in 
itself  tends  to  continuity  of  residence  and  has 
certain  advantages.  Among  the  present  staff  of 
whom  the  larger  number  have  been  in  residence  for 
more  than  twelve  years,  there  are  the  secretary  of 


SOCIALIZED   EDUCATION  451 

the  City  club,  two  practicing  physicians,  several 
attorneys,  newspaper  men,  business  men,  teachers, 
scientists,  artists,  musicians,  lecturers  in  the  School 
of  Civics  and  Philanthropy,  officers  in  The  Juve- 
nile Protective  Association  and  In  The  League  for 
the  Protection  of  Immigrants,  a  visiting  nurse,  a 
sanitary  inspector  and  others. 

We  have  also  worked  out  during  our  years  of 
residence  a  plan  of  living  which  may  be  called 
cooperative,  for  the  families  and  individuals  who 
rent  the  Hull-House  apartments  have  the  use  of 
the  central  kitchen  and  dining  room  so  far  as  they 
care  for  them  ;  many  of  them  work  for  hours  every 
week  in  the  studios  and  shops  ;  the  theater  and 
drawing-rooms  are  available  for  such  social  or- 
ganization as  they  care  to  form ;  the  entire  group 
of  thirteen  buildings  Is  heated  and  lighted  from  a 
central  plant.  During  the  years,  the  common 
human  experiences  have  gathered  about  the  House  ; 
funeral  services  have  been  held  there,  marriages 
and  christenings,  and  many  memories  hold  us,  to 
each  other  as  well  as  to  our  neighbors.  Each 
resident,  of  course,  carefully  defrays  his  own  ex- 
penses, and  his  relations  to  his  fellow  residents  are 
not  unlike  those  of  a  college  professor  to  his  col- 
leagues. The  depth  and  strength  of  his  relation 
to  the  neighborhood  must  depend  very  largely 
upon  himself  and  upon  the  genuine  friendships  he 
has  been  able  to  make.  His  relation  to  the  city 
as  a  whole  comes  largely  through  his  identification 


452    TWENTY  YEARS  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

with  those  groups  who  are  carrying  forward  the  re- 
forms which  a  Settlement  neighborhood  so  sadly 
needs  and  with  which  residence  has  made  him 
familiar. 

Life  in  the  Settlement  discovers  above  all  what 
has  been  called  ''the  extraordinary  pliability  of 
human  nature,"  and  it  seems  impossible  to  set 
any  bounds  to  the  moral  capabilities  which  might 
unfold  under  ideal  civic  and  educational  con- 
ditions. But  in  order  to  obtain  these  conditions, 
the  Settlement  recognizes  the  need  of  cooperation, 
both  with  the  radical  and  the  conservative,  and 
from  the  very  nature  of  the  case  the  Settlement 
cannot  limit  its  friends  to  any  one  political  party 
or  economic  school. 

The  Settlement  casts  aside  none  of  those  things 
which  cultivated  men  have  come  to  consider  reason- 
able and  goodly,  but  it  insists  that  those  belong 
as  well  to  that  great  body  of  people  who,  because 
of  toilsome  and  underpaid  labor,  are  unable  to 
procure  them  for  themselves.  Added  to  this  is  a 
profound  conviction  that  the  common  stock  of 
intellectual  enjoyment  should  not  be  difficult  of 
access  because  of  the  economic  position  of  him  who 
would  approach  it,  that  those  ''best  results  of 
civilization"  upon  which  depend  the  finer  and  freer 
aspects  of  living  must  be  incorporated  into  our 
common  life  and  have  free  mobility  through  all 
elements  of  society  if  we  would  have  our  democracy 
endure. 


SOCIALIZED   EDUCATION 


453 


The  educational  activities  of  a  Settlement,  as 
well  as  its  philanthropic,  civic,  and  social  under- 
takings, are  but  differing  manifestations  of  the 
attempt  to  socialize  democracy,  as  is  the  very  exist- 
ence of  the  Settlement  itself. 


I/' 


£dJSib:^ 


INDEX 


Abbott,  Grace,  222. 
Addams,  John  H., 

early  impressions  of,  i. 

imitation  of,  9. 

social  views  of,  13. 

religious  discussion  with,  14. 

discussion  on  death  with,  20. 

cosmopoHtanism  of ,  21. 

sense  of  fellowship  with,  22. 

his  estimate  of  Lincoln,  23. 

member  of  State  Senate,  30, 

letters  of  Lincoln  to,  3 1 . 

address  to  Old  Settlers'  meeting,  35. 

death  of,  52. 
Alcott,  Bronson,  50. 
Altgelt,  Governor,  206,  207. 
Anarchist, 

Sunday  school,  gi, 

his  solution  of  injustice,  180. 

a  safe  type  of,  185. 

newspaper  editor  arrested,  403,  406. 

attitude  of  Chicago  police  toward, 

413- 
Anarchy,  cure  for,  178. 

and  Hull-House,  412. 

attitude  of  pubhc  toward,  407,  411. 

dying  down  of,  412. 
Andover  House,  113. 
Arbitration  Law,  218. 
Aristotle,  quotation  from,  45. 
Averbuch,  413, 
Azefif,  421. 

B 

Ball,  Sidney,  37. 
Bamett,  Canon, 

reasons  for  living  in  a  Settlement, 
112. 


founder  of  Toynbee  Hall,  121. 
warden  of  Toynbee  Hall,  139. 
views  on  tainted  money,  140. 
visit  to  Hull-House,  292. 
art  exhibit  opened  by,  371. 
Benedict,  Enella,  373. 
Berger,  Victor,  194. 
Bermondsey  Settlement,  266. 
Besant,  Sir  Walter,  121,  365. 
Blaisdell,  Professor  of  Beloit  College, 

52,  53- 
Blatchford,  Robert,  264, 
Board  of  Education, 

compulsory  department  of,  300. 
Jane  Addams  member  of,  301. 
conflict  with  Teachers'  Federation, 

328-338. 
Jane    Addams,    chairman    School 
Management    Committee    of, 
335- 
newspaper   attitude   toward,   338, 
423. 
Booth,  Charles,  163. 
Bourtzefif,  Vladimir,  421. 
Bowen,  Lou'se  de  Koven, 

president  of  Hull-House  Woman's 

Club,  362,  364. 
president  of    the  Juvenile  Protec- 
tive Association,  365. 
"  Bread  Labor,"  271,  276. 
Breckinridge,  Sophronisba  P.,  306. 
Breshkovsky,  Mme.,  402. 
Britton,  Mrs.  Gertrude  Howe,  300, 

301. 
Browning,  Elizabeth,  22, 
Browning,  Robert,  47. 
Browning  House,  265. 
Bull  fight,  85-86. 
Burns,  John,  263,  294,  295. 


455 


4S6 


INDEX 


Caird,  Edward,  39,  40. 
Carlyle,  Thomas, 

"Heroes  and  Hero  Worship,"  36. 

quotation  from,  45. 

"  Frederick  the  Great,"  65. 
Catacombs,  study  of,  77. 

lectures  on,  83. 

an  interpretation  of  early   Chris- 
tianity, 84. 
Cathedrals, 

at  Ulm,  82-83. 

of  Humanity,  83,  149. 
Charity   Organization   Society,    158, 

161,  307. 
Chicago   Arts    and    Crafts    Society, 

375. 
Chicago  Federation  of  Labor,  225. 
Chicago  PoUce,  methods  of,  414. 
Chicago  School  of  Civics  and  Philan- 
thropy, 304. 
Chicago      Woman's      Trades-Union 

League,  227. 
Child  Labor,  198-200. 

investigations,  201. 

annual  meeting  of  National  Com- 
mittee, 303. 

Committee  on,  357. 
Child  Labor  Law, 

in  lUinois,  199,  201,  303. 

hardship  worked  by,  205. 

attitude  of  mothers  toward,  205. 

bitter  opposition  to,  205. 
Christian  Socialists,  190. 
Church  and  the  workingman,  191. 
City  Gardens  Association,  252. 
City  Homes  Association,  294,  304. 
City  Missionaries,  91. 
Civic  Cooperation, 

public  baths,  313. 

public  library,  314. 

and  Hull-House  Men's  Club,  315. 

paving,  320. 


Nineteenth     Ward     Improvement 

Association,  321. 

need  of,  323. 
Civic  Federation,  160,  213. 
Civic  significance  of  industrial  condi- 
tions, 195. 
Civil  Service,  289,  312,  316. 

methods,  324. 
Civil  War,  recollections  of,  23-27. 
Commonwealth  Colony,  277-279. 
Consumers'  League,  210. 
Culver,  Miss  Helen,  93,  94. 


D 


Davidson,  Thomas,  89,  90. 
Death, 

first  contact  with,  19,  20. 

protest  against  shielding  children 
from  knowledge  of,  20,  21. 

as  a  universal  experience,  53. 
Denver  priest,  murder  of,  424. 
De  Quincey, 

influence  of,  46. 

"Vision  of  Sudden  Death,"  70. 
Dewey,  John,  236,  237. 

lectures  on  social  psychology,  435. 
DuBois,  Professor  W.  E.  B.,  255. 
Dudley,  Helena,  114. 
Dukhobors,  280. 
Dunne,  Mayor,  329,  330,  332,  337, 

423. 
Durer,  Albrecht,  his  social  message, 

75. 


East  London   market   on   Saturday 

night,  66-68. 
Economic  discussion,  177,  188. 
Economic  experiments,  79-81. 
Education  Bill,  Enghsh,  263. 
Emerson,  Ralph  Waldo,  50. 
Employment  bureaus,  State,  221,  222. 
Extradition,  416. 


INDEX 


457 


Factory  law,  $;},  201,  202. 

eight-hour  clause,  204. 

associated  with  radicahsm,  206. 

Sulzer  Bill,  209. 
Free  speech,  defense  of,  185. 
Fremantle,  Canon,  87. 


Gage,  Lyman,  178. 
Garbage  collecting, 

investigation  of ,  281. 

death  rate  and,  284. 

civil  service  and,   287,   289. 

neighborhood     women's     attitude 
toward,  287. 

result  of,  288. 
Garbage    inspector,    Jane    Addams' 

experiences  as,  285. 
Garibaldi,  256,  424. 
George,  Henry,  181. 
Gershuni,  419. 
Gillette,  Dr.,  56. 
Giordano  Bruno  Club,  424. 
Gladden,  Washington,  141. 
Gorki's  visit  to  America,  421. 

newspaper  attitude  toward,  422. 
Gorst,  Sir  John,  263. 
Green,  Thomas  Hill,  37. 


H 


Halsted  Street,  description  of,  97. 

Hamilton,  Ahce,  297,  302,  305. 

Hardie,  James  Keir,  263. 

Harrison,  Frederic,  193. 

Haymarket  riot,  177,  178,  206. 

Henrotin,  Mrs.  Ellen,  202. 

Herron,  Professor,  189. 

Hill,  Octavia,  264. 

Hobson,  John,  265. 

Housing  conditions, 

V   pubHc  authorities  and,  98,  100. 


investigation  of,  289. 

congested,  294-296. 
Howells,  Wm.  D.,  307. 
HuU,  Charles  J.,  93. 
Hull-House, 

attempt  to  bribe,  $$. 

Lincoln  as  inspiration  to,  31. 

reputation  for  irreligion,  84,  150. 

theory  of,  91. 

renting  of,  93. 

history  of,  93, 

furnishing  of,  94. 
N-  first  guest  of,  9BT 

neighborhood  of,  98. 

first  resident  of,  loi. 

first  kindergarten  teacher  at,  102. 

first  kindergarten  at,  103. 

Old  Settlers'  Party,  107. 

neighborhood  services  of,  109. 

motives  for  opening,  125. 

first  cofifee  house  at,  128,  131,  132. 

Cooperative  Coal  Association,  134, 
144. 

test  of,  137. 

art  at,  148. 

ideal  of'Hull-House,  149. 

finances  of,  150. 

residents  of,  loi,  131,  151, 177, 194, 
196,  208,  210,  217,  273,  311,  386, 

449,  450- 
day  nursery  at,  i6q. 
establishment  o?7i77- 
reputation  for  radicahsm,  183. 
and  theorists,  194,  196. 
unions  organized  at,  212. 
and  law  enforcement,  295. 
celebration  of  national  events  at, 

256-258. 
playground  of,  ^qo-o.qt. 
attitude    of,    misunderstood,    299, 

407,  423,  425. 
post-office  at,  302. 
■inpphtics,  315,318,  344- 
influence  on  individuals,  346. 


458 


INDEX 


Hull  House,  —  Continued. 
pleasures  at,  348. 
art  exhibitions  at,  371. 
studio  at,  323- 
shops  at,  ^xSj. 
"^  concerts  at,_^26. 
chorus,  377. 

music  school,  377,  380,  395. 
theater,  38^,  393,  395- 
newspaper  attack  on,  402. 
college  extension,  428,  429. 
summer  school,  428. 
gymnasium,  442. 
military  drill  at,  444. 
economic  lectures  at,  429. 
University  Extension  at,  429. 
Sunday  evening  at,  430. 
classes  at,  435,  438. 
religion  at,  448. 
cooperative  living  at,  451. 
Hull-House  Buildings, 
Jane  Club,  137. 
Butler  Gallery,  148,  371. 
Children's  House,  169. 
Bowen  Hall,  349,  362,  430. 
Music  School,  378. 
Theater,  387. 
Boys'  Club,  439. 
Gymnasium,  442. 
Hull-House  Clubs, 

"The  Young  Heroes,"  104. 

Boys'  Club,  105,  442. 

Children's  Clubs,  105,  106. 

Young  People's  Clubs,  131, 

Men's  Club,  133,  3i5,  343- 

Jane  Club,  136,  139,  207. 

"The    Working    People's     Social 

Science  Club,"  179,  182,  185, 

188,  190,  196. 
Eight-Hour  Club,  204. 
Woman's  Club,  284,  288,  355,  357, 

362. 
Social  Clubs,  aims  of,  342,  366. 
standards  of,  343,  348. 


adaptabihty  of  members,  345. 

rules  of,  349. 

value  of,  365,  366. 
Friendly  Club,  361. 
Circolo  Italiano,  362. 
Dramatic  Association,  390. 
Shakespeare  Club,  434. 
Hull-House  Cooperative  Activities, 
employment     agencies     investiga- 
tion, 221. 
newsboy  investigation,  303. 
infant  mortality,  304. 
School  of  Civics  and  Philanthropy, 

304- 

social  value  of  saloons    investiga- 
tion, 304. 

industrial  exhibition,  305. 

pubhc  baths,  313. 
Hull-House  Investigations, 

garbage  collection,  284. 

housing,  290. 

typhoid  epidemic,  296. 

tuberculosis,  296. 

cocaine,  299. 

midwifery,  300. 

truancy,  300. 

children's  reading,  301, 

fatigue,  301. 
Hull-House  Labor  Museum,  235-245. 
"Hull-House  Maps  and  Papers,"  153. 
Hull-House  theater,  387. 

plays  given  in,  378,  388,  389,  391, 

393,  394,  395- 
mural  decoration  of,  396. 
Huntington,  Father,  181. 

I 

Illinois  Ten-Hour  Law  for  Women, 

227. 
Immigrants, 

differing  creeds  and  standards  of,  39. 
contrast  between  first  and  second 
generation  of,  231. 


INDEX 


459 


Immigrants,  —  Continued. 

colonization  of,  232. 

Italian  neighbors,  232,  246,  372. 

German  neighbors,  233, 

Bohemian  neighbors,  234,  246. 

parents  and    children,    235,    243, 
247. 

in  the  Labor  Museum,  240-242. 
Si    their    contribution     to    American 
^Ni^     hfe,  246. 

public  school  and,  253,  254. 

Greek  neighbors,  372. 

Hull-House  theater  and,  388-390. 
Ingram,  Canon,  265. 
International  League  for  Labor  Legis- 
lation, 230. 
Isolation  in  the  city,  117,  360. 
ItaUan  agricultural  colony,  232. 


James,  Professor  Wm.,  308. 
Jane  Club,  137-139- 
Jones,  Samuel,  188. 
rTuvenile  Court,  251,  252,  316. 
'   estabhshment  of,  324. 
building  of,  325. 
psychopathic  institute  of,  327. 
cooperation    of    Hull-House    Wo- 
man's Club  with,  355. 
Juvenile  Protective  Association, 
youngest  offenders,  and,  250. 
cooperation  with  Hull-House,  323. 
organization  of,  325. 
cooperation  with  Druggists'  Asso- 
ciation,   Saloonkeepers'    Pro- 
tective     Association,      Retail 
Grocers'  Association,  Associa- 
tion    of     Department     Store 
Managers,    Five-Cent    Thea- 
ters, 326. 
and  the  abnormal  child,  327. 
and     the     Hull-House     Woman's 
Club,  364. 


and  the  Five-Cent  Theater,  386. 
apphcation  to,  442. 


Kelley,  Florence,  201. 

and  child  labor,  201. 

first  factory  inspector,  207. 

State  factory  inspector,  310. 
Keyser,  Mary,  94. 
Kidd,  Benjamin,  194. 
Korolenko,  266. 
Kropotkin,  Peter,  402,  403,  405. 


Lathrop,  Julia  C, 

at  Plymouth,  114. 

member  of  State  Board  of  Chari- 
ties, 311,  312. 

Plato  Club,  435. 
League  for  the  Protection  of  Immi- 
grants, 222. 
Liebknecht,  264. 
Lincoln,  Abraham, 

death  of,  23. 

letters  from,  31. 

pictures  of,  31. 

inspiration  of,  32. 

admiration  of  contemporaries,  34. 

"appreciation  of,"  36. 

his    power   of    utilizing   past   ex- 
periences, 37. 

interpretation,  40. 

and  democracy,  42. 
Llo3'd,  Henry  D.,  142. 
London  County  Council,  262. 
Longfellow,  "  Golden  Legend,"  387. 

M 

Mason,  Colonel,  92. 
Masurek,  Professor,  234. 


460 


INDEX 


Maude,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Aylmer,  267, 

280. 
Maurice,  Frederick  Denison,  38. 
Marx,  Karl,  daughter,  264. 
Mazzini,  Joseph, 

death  of,  21. 

influence  of,  77. 

hundredth    anniversary    of    birth 
of,  257,  426. 
McDowell,  Mary,  223,  306. 
McKinley,  President, 

assassination  of,  403. 

assassin  of,  408,  409. 
Military  drill, 

Greek,  444. 

Columbian  Guards,  444. 
Mill, 

situation  of,  3. 

early  associations  with,  9-12. 

old  Settlers'  meeting  beside  the,  35. 
Mill,  John  Stuart,  189. 
Missionaries, 

classmates,  48. 

at  Hull-House,  49. 

pressure  at  college,  49. 
Morley,  John,  193. 
Municipal  Voters'  League,  322. 
Municipal  Franchise  for  Women,  339. 

N 

National     Woman 's     Trades-Union 

League,  213. 
Neighborly  offices,  in  early  days,  109- 

IIO. 

Night  work  for  women,  203. 
Nineteenth  Ward  Improvement  As- 
sociation, 321. 
Nonresistance,  273. 


Oglesby,  Governor, 
visit  of,  30. 


Old  Settlers'  Party,  107. 
Oxford, 

visit  to,  37. 

call  on  Edward  Caird  at,  39-41. 
Oxford  House,  265,  449. 


Paris  Exposition,  juror  at,  143. 
Passion  Play  at  Oberammergau,  391. 
Pater,  Walter,  quotation  from,  26. 
Peace  convention,  308. 
Peddlers,   Protective  Association   of 

Jewish,  255. 
Pelham,  Laura  Dainty,  364. 
Pingree,  Governor,  322. 
Plato,  53. 
Play, 

of  country  children,  16-18. 

contrasted  with  city  children,  17. 
Plunkett,  Sir  Horace,  143. 
Plutarch's  "  Lives,"  47. 
Plymouth,    the   summer    school    at 

113- 
Port  Royalists,  51. 
Poverty, 

first  sight  oi-,s,. 

in  East  London,  66-68. 

in  Europe,  69. 

on  Ilhnois  farm,  79. 

London  match  girls,  81. 

old  age  and,  154. 

bitterness  of,  158,  159. 

heroism  and,  169,  175-176. 

tragedies  of,  173,  381. 

problem  of,  307. 
PubHc   school    and    the    immigrant, 

153-254- 
Pullman  strike,  137. 

weakness  revealed  by,  213. 

class  bitterness  revealed  by,  214- 

218. 
reaction  on  Settlements,  228. 
Purleigh,  colony  at,  280. 


INDEX 


461 


R 


Race  problems,  255,  307. 
Recreation,  need  for,  351. 
Richards,  Mrs  Ellen  H.,  130. 
Rockford,  College,  43. 

atmosphere  of  intensity,  44. 

attitude  toward  Hfe  at,  45. 

De  Quincey's  "Dreams,"  46. 

reading  at,  47. 

class  motto,  48. 

careers  of  classmates,  48. 

missionary  appeal  at,  49. 

evangehcal  pressure  at,  49-50. 

Bronson  Alcott's  lecture  at,  50. 

Greek  testament  reading  at,  51. 

daily  regime  at,  51. 

philosophical  reflections  at,  58. 

deciding  on  career  at,  61. 

graduating  essay,  61. 

veneration  for    science  at,  61-63. 

degree  of  B./V.,  63. 
Rome,  the  enchantment  of,  77. 

second  visit  to,  84. 
Rudovitz,  Christian,  416. 
Ruskin,  John, 

road-building  episode  of,  38-39. 

reading  of,  47. 


Schurz,  Carl,  36,  418. 
Scudder,  Vida  D.,  114.      \j 
Settlement,  > 

meaning  of  the  term,  41.  1 
first  plan  of,  85.  — 

collective  living  at,  90.   \ 
subjective  need  for,  115.    V 
originated  in  England,  121. 
spiritual  force  in,  124. 
analysis  of,  125. 
attitude  toward,  137. 
no  rehgious  instruction  in,  141. 
humanitarianism  of,  152. 


relation  to  neighbors,  164. 
^'•^  functions  of,  166-167,  411. 
distrust  of,  184,  448. 
and     Chicago     Woman's   Trades- 
Union  League,  227. 
and  strikes,  228. 
and   the   International   League  of 

Labor  Legislation,  230. 
teaching  in,  427. 
as  interpreters,  411,  446. 
Small  parks,  132,  351. 
Smith,  Eleanor,  377. 
Smith,  Mary  Rozet,   262,   263,   267, 

274,  277. 
Social  Extension  Committee  of  Hull- 
House    Woman's    Club,    358, 
361. 
Social  maladjustment,  120,  177,  259, 

409. 
Social  obligation  in  America,  sense 

of,  367-370- 
Social  theory  and  practice,  276. 
Socialism,     a    cure    for     toothache, 

179- 

inabihty  to  accept  tenets  of,  186. 

Settlements  and,  229. 
Socialists, 

methods  of  attack  of,  57. 

enthusiasm  of,  180. 

devoted  efforts  of,  186. 

social  responsibility  of,  187. 
Starr,  Ellen  Gates,  87,  89,  94. 

reading  from  George  Eliot,  loi. 

president  Public  School  Art  Society, 

313- 
pupil  of  Cobden-Sanderson,  376. 
Dante  and  Browning  Classes  of, 

435- 
State    Board    of    Conciliation    and 

Arbitration,  214. 
Stead,  Herbert,  266. 
Stead,  Wm.  T.,  160. 
Stevens,  Alzina  Parsons,   207,  323, 

324. 


462 


INDEX 


Strikes, 

London  match  girls,  81. 

shoe  factory,  213-218. 

typographical,  191. 

Pullman,  213-218. 

garment  workers,  218. 

cutters,  219. 

Chicago  stock  yards,  223,  228,  229. 

teamsters,  224,  228,  434. 

value  of,  224. 
Swing,  Professor  David,  88. 


"Tainted  money,"  138-141. 

Taylor,  Dr.  Graham,  304. 

Teachers'  Federation,  law  suit  of,  328, 

331- 
promotional  examinations  opposed 

by,  331- 

affiliated  with  Chicago  Federation 
of  Labor,  332. 

demand  for  self-government,  335. 
Theater  and  life,  popularity  of,  383. 

Five-Cent,  386. 

functions  of,  391. 
Tillet,  Ben,  263. 
Tolstoy,  Count  Leo, 

"The  Snare  of  Preparation,"  88. 

indictment  of  Moscow,  194. 

"what  to  do,"  260-262. 

visit  to,  267-273, 

and  nonresistance,  273. 

bread  labor,  274. 

colonies,  277. 

"Resurrection"  fund,  280. 
Tomlins,  Wm.,  377. 
Toynbee,  Arnold,  37,  41. 
Toynbee  Hall,  87,  ^9,  90,  113,  121, 

139,  371. 
Trades-Unions, 

arbitration  for,  59-60. 

attempt    at    bettering    conditions, 

189. 


and  sweating  system,  202,  208. 

garment  makers,  202,  208. 

label,  209. 

women's,  211. 

Dorcas  Federal  Union,  212. 

Woman's  Union  Label  League,  212. 

National  Woman's  League,  213. 
corruption  in,  225. 

Scrub  Woman's  Union,  226. 

Settlements  and,  227,  228. 

tailor's,  305. 

and  industrial  exhibit,  305. 
Trevor,  John,  152. 

Trumbull,    Lyman,    talk    at    Hull- 
House,  34. 


U 


Unemployment,  160,  221. 
University  of  Chicago,  140,  182,  429. 
University  of  Chicago  Settlement,  223. 


Van  der  Vaart,  Harriet,  306. 
Visiting  Nurse  Association,  158,  300. 

W 

Ward,  Mrs.  Humphry,  265. 
Webb,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Sidney,  265. 
Wihnarth,  Mrs.  Mary,  89. 
Wisconsin,  University  of. 

Doctor's  Degree,  30. 
Woman's  Medical  College,  65. 
Woman's  suffrage,  54. 

Municipal  franchise,  339. 

Scandinavian  women  and,  339. 
Woman's  Trades-Union  League,  227 
Woods,  Robert  A.,  113. 
World's  Fair, 

winter  after  the,  159-165. 

congresses  of,  181. 
Wyckoflf,  Walter,  260. 


if 


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The  Care  of  Destitute,   Neglected,  and 
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Charities  for  Destitute  Children,  1801-1875  5  Removal  of  Children 
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Constructive  and  Preventive  Philanthropy 

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Savings  and  Loans;  The  Home;  Health  and  Building  Laws,  Model 
Tenements ;  The  Setting  of  the  Home ;  Vacation  Schools ;  Play- 
grounds for  Small  Children  ;  Baths  and  Gymnasiums  ;  Playgrounds  for 
Big  Boys;  Model  Playgrounds ;  Outings;  Boys'  Clubs;  Industrial 
Training ;  For  Grown  People  ;  Conclusion. 

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